Since I am a fan of all sorts of table games such as Monopoly, Dixit, Chess and many others I thought that I should make one of them by myself. I decided to go for a chessboard because my old one recently was damaged and it became unusable. The goal is to create interesting and decent looking chessboard out of materials that you can find at home. So as GreatScott would say, let’s get started!

Supplies

Below is the list of tools and materials you will need to create your own Chessboard.

Tools:

Cutting knife
Scissors
Ruler
Pencil
Paintbrush

Materials:

Universal adhesive or double-sided tape
Paper glue stick
Cardboard (40cm x 40cm and 44cm x 44cm)
Black acrylic paint (35ml)
White tape (50mm width and 5 meters length) or white acrylic paint (35ml)
Textured paper

Step 1: Measuring & Cutting.

First of all, take your cardboard and draw two squares, one 40 cm x 40 cm and another one 44 cm x 44 cm. After that use your cutting knife or scissors and cut out squares. If necessary smooth out cardboard lines using 200 or 220 grit sandpaper.

Step 2: Paint or Tape or Both?

Take the smaller square (40cm x 40cm) and cover it with black acrylic paint. Don't forget to use a little bit of water with paint to cover your cardboard evenly. When you are done with that let the paint dry completely. Now take bigger piece of cardboard (44cm x 44cm). Since I was a bit lazy I used white tape to cover sides of the bigger square but if you want better looking you can cover about 4cm from the edge of every side with white acrylic paint.

Step 3: White and Black Squares.

When your black painted piece is completely dried out you can move on further. In this step, you will need white tape to create two colors pattern. Since the black piece of cardboard is 40cm by 40cm we will need four black and four white squares in one line, so take your white tape and using scissors cut 5cm by 5cm square of the white tape and stick it on one of the cardboard edges. After that make a 5cm gap from the first white square and stick another one white square. By doing that you will create a chessboard pattern. This step can take some time.

Step 4: Design

Find a paper with interesting textures and apply it on a bigger piece of cardboard sides to make your chessboard look interesting. Use your scissors to create different shapes of textured paper and using glue stick apply it on the board sides.

Step 5: Final

Now it is time to glue both pieces of cardboard together. Before starting connecting your two pieces you must to center them with each other. Mark some lines on a bigger piece to know the exact spot where your smaller piece should be. I used a double-sided tape to connect both pieces of cardboard but it didn't work out as I expected so I also added some universal glue between both cardboard pieces. Add some heavy things on top of your chessboard and wait until glue will do their job.