If you haven’t been following along, Oh My Meeple is taking on our first print and play board game. Due to missing out on the kickstarter, and not wanting to pay a fortune for the deluxe version of Chai (the only option presently available), we decided to make a project out of this intriguingly themed board game.
All about the foam
Chai the board game has a lot of parts! Lots of cardboard and acrylic bits that make this game visually pleasing to look at. One of the biggest dilemmas I had was picking a material to craft these bits out of. The initial thought was to use chipboard. I have a Cricut Air that supposedly will cut chipboard, but it sounds like this produces some mixed results. I also didn’t have any chipboard, and didn’t want to buy any either! The solution? Craft foam. I happened to have a pack of rainbow colored craft foam, similar to this option from Amazon. Cricut Air can cut craft foam too!
I used the Design Studio software that works with Cricut to create the basic templates for the different component shapes. A few different sized circles and some squares is all I needed. Then, I simply cut out the shapes on the corresponding colors of craft foam that would match the various Chai print and play board game components.
![](https://ohmymeeple.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Chai-Foam.jpg)
Cutting out the cardstock
Using the Cricut to cut out all of the foam was helpful, but what about all the cardstock elements? I have pages and pages of Chai components that need to be cut out before they can be glued to the foam. Fortunately, I do have a 1 inch circle punch. This allowed me to quickly punch out all the medium sized coins and the pantry tokens. For the small and large sized cricles, I had to (gulp) use scissors and cut them out by hand. It was a little time consuming, but worth it! I also cut most of the flavor tiles out by hand too. Somehow the blade on my paper cutter decided to go missing.
![](https://ohmymeeple.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Chai-wild-1024x768.jpg)
![](https://ohmymeeple.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Chai-components.jpg)
Assembling the Chai Print and Play Components
With the foam and cardstock pieces all cut out, the final step is assembly. I simply brushed the top of the foam with a decent layer of Mod Podge. Then, I placed the corresponding cardstock piece on the glue and pressed down. Finally, I added another layer of Mod Podge on top of the cardstock. Let each piece dry, flip over, and repeat with the backside of each component!
**The only variation to the assembly process was with the flavor tiles. I wanted these tiles to be thicker so they’d stand off the marketplace board a bit, much like the actual game components do. In order to achieve this effect, I glued two pieces of the foam squares together, and then glued the corresponding cardstock pieces to each side. If I were to make these tiles a second time, I would experiment with gluing 3 layers of foam together instead of just 2. It would definitely give them some added dimension.
![](https://ohmymeeple.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/flavor-tiles2.jpg)
Follow along with the rest of the series:
If you missed the part 1 of this series, you can check it out here. I covered the process of making the actual cards for the game.
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