Dear Chad and Abbi: Don't LOOK!

So, this is a little gift that I just sent off yesterday for my brother and his beautiful wife for Christmas.  I was too excited about it, that I couldn't help but post it early. So Chad and Abbi, if you are paloozing through blogs, stop here!  It looks much better in person.

First, I bought a Monopoly game.

Then, I got contacted them and got a list of schools, colleges, places they lived growing up, jobs they both held, and places they have visited together.  With this couple, I had PLENTY to work with.  I wish I could have used it all, but I think we got the most important ones.

Then, I did a little research.  I found pictures of each of the places, the mascots, and designed a monopoly board to put them on.  

I wanted the Monopoly board to look authentic so I tried to include some of the original Monopoly pictures as well as some of my own.  And this is what came out of it:

 Monopoly: The Chad and Abbi Edition. The font that is used on the original Monopoly game is called "Kabel." 

 Then I personalized the property cards, community chest and chance cards to the board.  Originally, I was going to make my own card, but these ones looked great, I just printed out labels and stuck them on top of the original ones. You can hardly tell.  

 Then I printed it at Sam's Club.  I designed the game board in Microsoft Publisher to a 20x20 size (that's the size of the board on Monopoly).

HOWEVER, with that being said, I decided to print it at Sam's Club on a poster ($7.96).  The posters are sized at 20x24 so I readjusted my design so that I could print it directly there without it distorting it.  It worked out perfectly.

 I cut it in half so that the game board would fold up.  Then, I glued it to the original Monopoly Board.  (I used Rubber Cement but I wouldn't recommend that for next time).  Then I put a gloss spray on top of it to put it all together. 

It looks awesome, and I can't wait for them to open it on Christmas day!