Homemade Cornhole & Cornhole Bags

I'm getting down to the wire with the things that I have to get finished for my mom & dad's 50th anniversary party (the end of September). I feel like time is starting to get away from me. sheesh! Though, I am happy to say that we're pretty much finished with our homemade cornhole games. We decided to make two sets since we're expecting about 200 people at the party...I'm having other games too. 'What is cornhole?', you ask? Well, let me tell you. Cornhole is the grown up version of bean bag toss. The difference is that instead of beans in your bag...there is corn feed. Hence you throw the corn through the hole- Cornhole. Actually, there are all sorts of official rules if you really want to be the 'real deal'. There are three sites I found that I referred back to a lot to make sure we were making them correctly: The American Cornhole Organization, American Cornhole Association, & Cornhole-How-To. They all have very good info. Branson followed how to construct our Cornholes from Cornhole-How-To....with a few modifications of his own. I'll explain later.

Now, I want to show you how to paint your own Cornhole with a professional look! If you're an artist and can do this stuff free-hand, more power to you, but if you're like me and need a little help. I'll show you my cheat. I learned this a long time ago when I was a teenager. I used to help paint decorations for my church and this is how I was taught. You find a picture that you like and if you have a movie projector that you can plug your computer up to...you can display that image on the wall. If you don't have a movie projector, but you have an overhead projector, you can use that too. You need to print your image onto a transparency so you can place it on the screen of your overhead projector.

Found this picture from Wikipedia. These look so ancient now-a-days. =)

My husband has a projector for his man cave. 

So, he showed me how to plug the computer into the projector itself.

 I couldn't get the picture to go low enough to the ground to trace it to the cornhole so I had to flip the picture upside down. I also had to get one of our folding chairs and turn the cornhole upside down so I could trace the image.

If you just insert the picture in Word it's a little easier to work with. You trace the entire picture. Sometimes it was hard to see so what helps is if you print off a picture of what your tracing so you can go back to it to make sure you following the correct lines.

 Once you're all finished tracing...it's painting time!

I found these two sets of acrylic paints at Home Depot.

I was taught that you start with the lightest color first...you go lightest to darkest when painting things like this. Of course there are exceptions to the rules...aren't there exceptions to everything?

You can see my traced lines...now it's just a matter of filling in the colors. =)

Getting there....I couldn't make up my mind about the top of the hot air balloon's color. I was going to do purple...& that's why I was going to do that last...but then I changed my mind.

The yellow looks much better. =)

 The nice thing about this was I outlined the balloon in black so it would cover any blue sky that the yellow in the balloon couldn't cover completely.

 

 All finished!

 I love them!! Branson helped me with the black lines in the middle of the balloon...I always get nervous when painting with black.

 Now for my Ball jars...I painted the jar a translucent white color (with a little bit of glitter) just so it would stand apart from the wood a little bit. The water I wanted a certain blue for that, so I ended up mixing some green & white in to get the "perfect" color. =)

 I also ended up mixing up the colors for the flowers.

 I love watching it develop. 

 Almost finished.

I just have to outline 'Ball' in the dark teal color. 

 I needed a tiny tiny brush to do the outlining. Branson found this multi-pack of brushes at Walmart. 25 brushes to this set for $5!! I wish I would have had them when I started on this project! Oh, well. I'm glad I have them now for future projects.

 The brush I used was a '0'...it worked beautifully. LOVE this brush set!!

 LOVE this!!!

Now that we're finished with these, Branson will paint a couple coats of clear polyurethane on the tops & sides to protect it.

I couldn't be more pleased with them!

I wanted to show you the back, because Branson used 1X4s instead of 2X4s, so it would make the cornhole a little lighter, yet still the same dimensions. He added a 1X4 thru the center for extra support. The legs also fold into the Cornhole board for easy storage. Branson is going to drill 2 holes on one of the long sides of the Cornhole board so we can add a rope handle to make it easier to transport.

 As I'm slaving away painting...Boo is just lounging on our rocking chair (that I still need to paint and reupholster). Must be a rough life. He can barely open both eyes! sheesh...back to work with me. =)

 Onto the making of the cornhole bags. Now on the website they used 'duck cloth'. I didn't have any of that...& I wasn't buying any special fabric for this project...remember you don't have to be ultra fanatical about this. I did use thicker material that I had on hand. I also ironed on fusible interfacing on the cotton fabrics, but not on the jean material, just to make sure it would be tough enough to be thrown.

What you need to do with your fabric is cut it at 7 inches by 7 inches. You'll sew in a 1/2 inch, making it an even 6 inches by 6 inches when you're finished.  My husband made me this handy-dandy 6X6 template so I could just trace it right onto the fabric and sew mindlessly. =) The indent is to remind me not to sew there...so I can get my 2 cups of corn feed inside.

 I always recommend pinning because sometimes the fabric doesn't like to behave. =)

 One set of cornhole bags...just need the corn feed.

Second set of cornhole bags.

 Yeah! They look so cute together!!

I'm pretty sure this one is my fav!!

Lots more projects to do for my mom & dad's anniversary party!! I'm trying to keep it organized...as you can tell I've taken over part of my kitchen. =) I can't wait for everything to come together at the party.