DIY Disney Monorail Scavenger Hunt Cards

I've always had a love-affair with the monorail system in Walt Disney World. It's magical in it's own right, and such a cool way to travel! As a kid I longed to stay in the Contemporary Resort so we could see the monorail swishing through the concourse on a regular basis.

And as a kid, we always played a monorail version of the license plate game, keeping track of the different colors we'd seen. Today there are twelve monorails operating in WDW. Rarely are they all on-line at once. But if you are lucky, you could see most of the following: Red, Orange, Yellow, Gold, Peach, Coral, Green, Lime, Blue, Teal, Silver and Black.

In the spirit of making the most of our wait time (there can be A LOT of wait time in Disney, depending on your travel dates), I created these scratch-off cards for the kids in our party. I used a heavy card stock to print these, and I would recommend making several extras as you may need them for those adults kids who tend to lose theirs in the parks, or for a learning curve with the scratch-off paint.

Then, I used this tutorial from Artmind to make scratch-off paint. A couple of tips regarding the scratch-off paint: 1.) It bubbled up when I applied it, but most of the bubbles went away as it dried. The more you agitate the paint, the more bubbles you will get. 2.) A lighter color of paint is recommended. I used copper and it didn't scratch off cleanly - as you can see in the photo below. The gold was much better.

To create the actual card, I used a scanned image of the monorail from a promotional Disney flyer. You may want to clean up the edges of the image in Photoshop. To create the different colored monorails, I selected the color stripe so it could be changed to the different colors I needed. Due to copyright laws, I can do this for my own personal use, but not, I am sorry to say, to distribute it to others. Therefore, I cannot offer you a PDF as I would like to. I can, however, refer you to my March 5th post about how to select an image and create a PNG from your own photo, and this tutorial on how to select an area of a scanned image in Photoshop and change its color. It was much easier than it sounds. Give it a try. And remember that if you are scaling down your image significantly, you will not have to be so worried about little detail areas that don't look right on a larger scale. Some of them just disappear. Don't stress yourself out about the little things.

Of course, it was only logical that each kid got a pressed penny to use as a scratch-off tool! The edge was perfect for removing the paint. I hope you give this scavenger hunt a try. We had a blast using them. Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust.

Hello Podcast!

I have recorded my first podcast! If you love adding a little extra pixie dust to your trips then be sure to catch today's podcast over at Capturing Magic! (You can also subscribe to Capturing Magic through your Podcast App on your iPhone; simply search "Capturing Magic.") You'll learn about all sorts of ways to sprinkle that magical dust on your next vacation. Thanks so much to Steph for the opportunity!

Disney DIY Flip Book: Spinner Page

As I have mentioned before, one of my tactics for enjoying Walt Disney World is curtailing the complaining when it comes to waiting. Our kids seem to be particularly adept at complaining in "the happiest place on earth." Of course, there is a direct link from tired to whiny. Something to thoughtful consider when planning your fun. In my vigilant attempt to keep the whining at bay, I created a flip book for our kids to use in the parks this year. It was a time-consuming project, but the prospect of happy children made it worth the effort. (You could always skip the flip book and just make one of these to have on hand, if you wanted to make it easier on yourself!)

For this page, I created a waiting game spinner. It was incredibly simple using Photoshop, card stock, cardboard, and some spinner arrows I found here, but you could just google "4-inch arrow spinners" and see what you come up with; I like to shop around for the best deal.

I made this the last page of the flip book, so it could adhere to the sturdy cardboard cover. Once I had created my spinner in Photoshop, I sized it to my flip book (5x7) and printed as many copies as I needed (8). May I humbly recommend that you make at least one extra? These tend to have a way of falling out monorail window vents, over balconies, and the like. (Not that those things happened to us.)

Inserting the spinner was a little tricky. I would recommend punching a hole in the paper and then cutting extra slits around the hole to get the large base flat against the back of the paper. This way, your spinner will spin freely. (If you look closely at the photo on the left you can see the slits.) You can always practice this on a scrap piece of paper first.

Ta-da! You now have a boredom buster at your fingertips - just don't forget it in the room! And if you'd like to use my spinner page, you can download it here for free.


Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

DIY Disney Monorail Scavenger Hunt Cards

I've always had a love-affair with the monorail system in Walt Disney World. It's magical in it's own right, and such a cool way to travel! As a kid I longed to stay in the Contemporary Resort so we could see the monorail swishing through the concourse on a regular basis.

And as a kid, we always played a monorail version of the license plate game, keeping track of the different colors we'd seen. Today there are twelve monorails operating in WDW. Rarely are they all on-line at once. But if you are lucky, you could see most of the following: Red, Orange, Yellow, Gold, Peach, Coral, Green, Lime, Blue, Teal, Silver and Black.

In the spirit of making the most of our wait time (there can be A LOT of wait time in Disney, depending on your travel dates), I created these scratch-off cards for the kids in our party. I used a heavy card stock to print these, and I would recommend making several extras as you may need them for those adults kids who tend to lose theirs in the parks, or for a learning curve with the scratch-off paint.

Then, I used this tutorial from Artmind to make scratch-off paint. A couple of tips regarding the scratch-off paint: 1.) It bubbled up when I applied it, but most of the bubbles went away as it dried. The more you agitate the paint, the more bubbles you will get. 2.) A lighter color of paint is recommended. I used copper and it didn't scratch off cleanly - as you can see in the photo below. The gold was much better.

To create the actual card, I used a scanned image of the monorail from a promotional Disney flyer. You may want to clean up the edges of the image in Photoshop. To create the different colored monorails, I selected the color stripe so it could be changed to the different colors I needed. Due to copyright laws, I can do this for my own personal use, but not, I am sorry to say, to distribute it to others. Therefore, I cannot offer you a PDF as I would like to. I can, however, refer you to my March 5th post about how to select an image and create a PNG from your own photo, & this tutorial on how to select an area of a scanned image in Photoshop and change its color. It was much easier than it sounds. Give it a try. And remember that if you are scaling down your image significantly, you will not have to be so worried about little detail areas that don't look right on a larger scale. Some of them just disappear. Don't stress yourself out about the little things.

Of course, it was only logical that each kid got a pressed penny to use as a scratch-off tool! The edge was perfect for removing the paint. I hope you give this scavenger hunt a try. We had a blast using them. Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust.

DIY Disney Laugh Floor Props

This is a fun little project that you can accomplish during your little one's nap time. (Around this cottage, we appreciate what little time we have!) We usually travel with a large group of people to the parks. This makes for a lot of fun when you wind up on the Laugh Floor in Tomorrowland. Our people are camera junkies, so naturally they all want to end up with their jokes being told and their mugs on the screen. The "monsters" who operate the Laugh Floor are looking for anything just a bit unusual - or easy to make fun of. We tend to cater to that esthetic.

If your crew wants to get noticed on the Laugh Floor, try making these adorable Monster Mouths. And if you happen to need a Monsters Inc. font, check out Font Meme. You can type in your text and save it as a png. Love it!

I used my Silhouette SD for this project, and design id #29673 (4 Monster Mouths). One thing I love about the Silhouette is that each image is only $0.99. And bonus: this image id actually includes 4 images for the same price. It's SO much more affordable than other systems that require you to buy a package of images even when you are only interested in one or two. 

Tutorial

You will need:

white card stock

Silhouette design #29673

Popsicle sticks

Double-sided tape

Silhouette SD (or Cameo)

1. Download your image; it should already be sized appropriately. Ungroup the image and layer all the pieces so you have them assembled as in the download image.

2. Fill in the colors you want your mouths to be by selecting the paint bucket tool. I used the same color scheme that was used in the image, but have fun with it. Maybe your crew is more Sully than Mike.

3. Use the group tool to group each mouth once you have the colors the way you want them. 

4. Select the scissor tool at the top of the page and select cut edge. This will ensure that you're cutting around the mouth instead of cutting out all the pieces of the mouth.

5. You are ready to print and cut! I always like to use the registration marks, because I know my machine with cut it exactly the way I want it to.

6. Once your mouths are cut out, use a little bit of double-sided tape on the back to hold the popsicle stick in place. I would actually recommend leaving one side of the tape covered and assembling these the morning you are going to the parks. Not only will it be fun for the kiddos, but you'll have some fun photo ops on the way there and back.

We hope you enjoy these funny little faces, and thanks to Doc for humoring me with these photos. As always, may your days be filled with fairy dust!

Disney DIY Flip Books: Ideas

One of my tactics for enjoying Walt Disney World is curtailing the complaining when it comes to waiting. Our kids seem to be particularly adept at complaining in "the happiest place on earth." Of course, there is a direct link from tired to whiny. (Something to thoughtfully consider when planning your fun.) In my vigilant attempt to keep the whining at bay, I created a flip book for our kids to use in the parks this year. It was a time-consuming project, but the prospect of happy children made it worth the effort.

Rapunzel at Cinderella's Castle declaring,
"These are awesome. Let's do one of these!"

When making these, there are several ways to use what is already out there on the Internet. I used these ideas to create pages for our trip. I simply made sure to print any images at the size I wanted (in my case, 5x7).

• Customized Bingo Cards - Use MAGIC instead of BINGO. I made a Bingo game for our Character Meal, but you could use it for anything you can dream up.
• Customized Word Search - put all your names in it plus your favorite characters, parks, etc.
• Coloring Pages - simply google "Disney coloring pages" and you'll have plenty to choose from.
• Puzzle Pages - my kids were always more interested in puzzles than coloring. If this is the case for your mouseketeers, google "Disney puzzle pages" for a huge selection.
• Sticker Sheets - keep an eye out in the dollar section of your favorite store for these.
• Mad Libs - you can make your own or find a related book. We happened to find a Star Wars book that was perfect for us.
• Jokes for the Laugh Floor & Monster Mouths - to be mentioned next time!
• Monorail Scratch-Off Scavenger Hunt - coming soon to this very blog!
• Boredom Buster Spinners - coming soon!
• Blank Pages - even my non-autograph-seeker was happy to use this book for autographs at character meals; anything to keep those characters around just a bit longer!

There are all sorts of things you can do to make these books special. I like to personalize them as much as possible for our travel crew and our trip. Since we were traveling in October, I tried to make these look a little like spell books, and of course, I included many Halloween-y pictures and activities.

When it came to binding them, I used a Zutter machine (which I already had), but you could just as easily take the elementary teacher's route and use 2 or 3 binder rings. It doesn't have to be expensive, just chock full of fun! And for the curious, my cover design was made using the Silhouette Fancy Label Set, design id #20334 and the font Beyond Wonderland. I created the Mickey head using the circle tool.

Many kids carry around autograph books; these are simply another way to stay occupied in-between the big fun. One last suggestion: these should in no way encumber you further as you comb the parks. Make it the responsibility of your child to carry (or find a safe place in the stroller) for his/her book.

Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!