Magic: The Gathering- An Advent Calendar

I had no idea what to get my eleven-year-old brother for Christmas. After brainstorming for a while, I decided that I wanted to get him a LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar, but I wasn't really willing to fork out fifty bucks for twenty or so dollars worth of pieces.

I really like the idea of giving him an advent calendar. And after coming home from college to "DANI! I WENT TO THE COMIC BOOK STORE TODAY! LOOK AT THE CARDS I GOT!", I knew that I must make him an advent calendar that would feed his new addiction- Magic: The Gathering.

I bought a Deck Builder's Toolkit of Amazon for $15. Kareshi helped me sort the cards into twenty-four categories, one category for each day in December until Christmas.

The first envelope is a wrapper to a booster pack. This was Kareshi's idea. He thought I'd be good to make my brother guess what the other envelopes were. Surprisingly, my brother didn't notice the colors of the tree "ornaments"- mana! Envelope 2 contains the tokens from the booster packs.

3 - 8: Land

9 - 20: Each contain a "set" of 3 or 4 cards. Angles, vampires, birds, werewolves, etc.

21 - 23: Double-Faced cards (which my brother loves), Rares, and Mythic Rares.

24: Booster pack!

Day 25 will be his actual present under the tree- the rest of the cards from the toolkit, along with the box it came with.

I can't wait for the first of December to come!

Magic Life Counter

A dear friend of mine recently taught me how to play Magic: The Gathering.

Even though I don't have any sweet Planeswalker-skills [yet], I'm totally in the game and I can't wait until I have some extra cash to start buying and building decks and such.

Speaking of buying decks- I was browsing the Internet today, looking for life counters.

The life counters that Wizards of the Coast are making right now:

Photo Cred: Link

Basically, it's a $10 piece of plastic with a two dials. In my opinion- that's $10 I'd rather not spend. So, if you're sick of tracking you life with good old pencil and paper, here's the solution I came up with:

I used a piece of photo paper with the Magic card baking printed on it, box board, glue, a paper fastener, a copy of the dial (below), a ruler, and scissors.

It's pretty simple.

Cut out a piece of box board that is the same size as the card. Then cut out a circle for the dial. The inside circle on a roll of masking tape made for a good tracer. Make small holes in the exact center of each with the tip of the scissor.

Glue the center of the dial to the center of the dial. Obviously, I need to go back to the 8th grade and take geometry again- my "center of the circle" is not exactly the center!

Cut a small rectangle about a fourth of the way down from the top.

Stack the three pieces together and put the fastener in. Put a little glue on the top and bottom of the card, so it sticks to the backing. Make sure to not get any on the dial or it won't work!

Pretty simple, huh? XD

Planeswalker's Satchel

I've been working on this for a while, and I am very happy that it's finished!

It can hold two 75-card decks (in sleeves).

It was pretty simple to make! It just took quite some time. Lots of gluing and drying and gluing and drying.

I started with a wooden frame constructed from scrap wood.

I found a ton of vinyl on the remnants rack at JoAnn for $3.33! It was perfect for covering the frame. The vinyl was glued on in layers, allowing each layer to dry for 24 hours before adding the next. I don't have pictures of the last steps because my memory card was full and I completely forgot about it until today. XD

Magic Deck Boxes

A dear friend of mine recently taught me how to play Magic: The Gathering.

Even though I don't have any sweet Planeswalker-skills [yet], I'm totally into the game and I can't wait until I have some extra cash to start buying and building decks and such.

I was browsing the Internet the other day and I found this sweet papercraft for Magic deck boxes. They were designed by a graphic artist in Dallas by the name of Matthew Milam. His work is awesome.
Check it out: Link

The boxes he made definitely turned out better than mine, but they were still a lot of fun to make! Plus, they're nothing more than card stock and glue, so they're super simple to make. The only thing I don't like about them is that they're not sized to accommodate a deck with protector sleeves. When my printer has more ink, I think I'm going to try to printing off the papercraft a little bit larger than original size to see if I can get a deck with sleeves to fit.