Make Craft Game

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These Arkham Horror Magnets are a fun decorative piece or can be a good way to track of favorite campaign order. 

It is no secret that I am a very big fan of the Arkham Horror (and Arkham Horror inspired) board games. Recently, I have been playing through the various campaigns of the Arkham Horror LCG. This has been one of my top Arkham games for a while and I am excited to play through the game and see more story and characters.

But after about 4 campaigns, I was asked which one is my favorite. This was a difficult question to answer. We are playing the campaigns relatively quickly, so they are getting mixed up in my brain. Also, recency bias is very real. I decided I needed a solution.

And that’s when I came up with the idea for Arkham Horror magnets! I wanted to make a magnet to represent every campaign and then I would be able to put them in order to mark how I felt about things. Sometimes, when I am bad at figuring things out in my head, it is easier to figure things out in a physical way. Plus, the magnets turned looking really cool.

Check out the Craft section of MCG for more fun patterns in strings and things or more unlimited ideas.

Supplies

The total list of supplies include:

• Chitboard
• Green Vinyl, matching the “Arkham Horror” vibe
• Black Vinyl
• White Vinyl
• Flat Magnet Strip
• Black Sharpie
• Weeding Hook

Process

Creating the Design

Before I could start on making the magnets, I wanted to make the design for the magnets. This step helped me figure out the size of each magnet and how each campaign would sit atop. I wanted to have the name of the campaigns on each Arkham Horror magnet because I am not the best at purely memorizing symbols.

I did feel the black text on green just felt a little flat. And I was worried that the black would blend with the green so the words would not be visible at a distance. But then I thought, “why not add a white boarder?”

Assembly

After the design was finished, I cut out all the needed parts for the Arkham horror magnets using the Cricut. I’m sure this can be done another way, but this is by far the easiest with how delicate this design turned out to be.

I decided to attach the green vinyl to the chitboard and have them cut together. This was after cutting out the stickers and sticking them on after. I think having them cut together just brought about a cleaner look.

But with patience, i.e., a lot of difficulty, I was able to find a technique that worked well and was able to safely transfer almost every letter. I do not have a delicate hand. This was a good challenge to get me to slow down and be meticulous.  

I colored the edges black to avoid having the chitboard show. For the last step, I cut the magnet into a similar shape to the chitboard but about 80% smaller. Then I attached the magnet to the back of the chitboard to truly make my Arkham Horror magnets.

Reflections

Wow, wow, wow. This was difficult! I feel like I am surprised too often by how difficult it is to get some ideas out of my head and into the real world. Transferring words turned out to be more of a challenge than I anticipated. I ended up printing out several words multiple times to get the letters just the way I wanted. And sometimes I still didn’t get there (the S’s were the worst)

But I really love how they turned out. The Arkham Horror magnets were able to lie flat and look good when displayed. Even having just one looked good, but I prefer the whole set. I had a ball of trying to put them in some sort of order based off the campaigns I have already played.

Lessons

Weeding

The more I play with Cricut, the more I learn. So, I discovered that when cutting vinyl (or anything really), removing the excess material is called weeding. I figured the cut would automatically make the material not stick together but that not necessarily true. I found that the cut is more a guideline, and some pressure is still needed to remove the bad (or good) parts. You just need to add a little pressure.

Quick Recipe