Mikado game cover

This week, in between putting away the Christmas decorations and taking care of several tons of laundry, I didn't have a lot of time for crafting. But because I'm forcing myself to work on decluttering and complete at least one project a week, I found something that is a little bit of both.

I've had a set of Mikado sticks in one of my desk drawers for several years now. It came to our house as a gift from a newspaper or a magazine, I can't remember, but my kids never played with it.

Now, we love Mikado at our house. I personally think it's a game that helps children develop fine motor skills, concentration and simple math concepts (if you make them add the points in the end). But my kids have two other sets they play with, so this one was never used.

Several times I thought of re-gifting it, but since it didn't come with a box or a set of rules (or maybe it came and they got lost along the way), it was just left in the drawer.

Now that I'm totally committed to declutter the house I decided that this Mikado had to be made presentable. After much debating, I thought a bag would be the most appropriate packaging.

I went online and googled around for the rules, and then adapted the text to the stick colors I was working with. While I was at it, I also made a tag, printed everything, cut to size and then laminated both the rules and the tag. I also added an eyelet to the tag.

Then I cut a piece of felt slightly larger than the printed rules and long enough to be folded to form a bag.

I sewed on bot sides, with a piece of elastic tucked in one of the sides.

Before pinning the elastic, I passed it through the tag eyelet, so that when the bag was turned inside out I had an elastic to close the bag with the tag in place.

Now, with a little imagination and a bit of sewing, I have a game of Mikado that can easily be used as a gift for any of the zillion birthday parties my kids are invited to along the school year and one less item cluttering my drawers.

After this, I then thought that making my own Mikado sticks might not even be that difficult. How cute would a washi tape Mikado look?

Enjoy,