Thing I Made Thursday #26: Barsoomian chess set!
Oh my god, you guys. I love it.
This was incredibly labor-intensive, but I am so proud of it.
I may have mentioned that I love Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars books. They are pulpy, seriously problematic in terms of gender and race issues, and occasionally incredibly stupid, but I adore them.
I got a kick in the butt now that we've begun the new gaming campaign, and since our continuum's Mars is canonically Barsoom, I decided I wanted to play a lady panthan (a wandering warrior of no fixed affiliation or abode; a sort of knight-errant). I mean, hot. We've recently touched on how my characters acquire things. I decided that Shara should have a traveling Jetan set so that she could strike up a game of Martian chess with friendly fellow travelers and maybe win herself a bit of cash.
So I made it. Shrug.
I love breaking out the lanterns.
I went with cream and black on orange and dark brown pieces, and a black and natural linen canvas color for the field, instead of the traditional yellow and black.
Frankly? I don't like yellow. I really do not. No offense to all you yellow-loving people. It's not you, it's me.
I designed the pieces super-loosely on the descriptions. Like, you probably wouldn't be able to trace my line of thought for anything but the fliers and the chief and queen. Possibly the dwar and padwar.
Accuracy by the books was not my intent. Rather, it's speculative.
Some Earth chess sets are quite stylized, and I see no reason why Jetan would be any different.
Sargon says the pieces are too complicated and not distinct enough from one another. He totally has a point. I posit, though, that these more complicated designs are based on accepted abstract symbols used in sets of this type, so they'd be recognizable to experienced players, which almost everyone on Barsoom is.
It's visually appealing, though, and I did a good job giving it a consistent feel.
I just arranged the pieces attractively; this is not part of an actual game.
Actually, I stink at strategic games like this.
Shara doesn't though. I don't feel too rotten. She's, like, a hundred and eighty something. She's good at lots of things.
I love the design of the whole thing. It has a lot of character and presence. I think so, anyway.
The only shot I got of the little score card I made. My lady panthan was beating the snot out of her pirate boyfriend. Yes, I made up letters and numbers. That's the equivalent of cursive, not type.
The box is this little wooden thing with a thin wooden lid that is flexible like paper. I lined the inside with dirtied-up gold paper.
I used the same design on the side as I did on the chief (king) pieces.
And here's the princess (queen) design.
The bottom. Love.
The only shot I got of the back.
The pieces fit perfectly into the little wooden box. I was so delighted by this I spent about ten minutes just taking the pieces out and putting them back in. The score card folds and goes in under the folded canvas board. I was equally delighted by the little thong fastener I devised.
The lights are down. I think Shara and her pirate were sexing each other up by this point.
Boring-ass making-of:
I used washes of acrylic paint over wood to get the orange and the brown, the designs were then painted in black.
For the game pieces, I scuffed them up with medium sandpaper and rubbed them down with microcrystalline wax so they wouldn't stick to each other and pull off the paint.
For the box, I sponged on matte sealer unevenly over the designs.
Next, I cut a piece of frame spacer to length and fixed it in the bottom of the box to keep the pieces from rolling forward.
Then I crumpled up a sheet of thick gold scrapbooking paper and went over it with a brown wash. I dabbed it off unevenly, dried it, cut a strip to size, and glued it in. This is the part I wish I had done a little differently. The lid came out really stiff, a lot stiffer than it was to start with. It looks fine, though.
I took super-fine (400-600 grit) sandpaper to the whole outer surface to soften the finish, which was too glossy for my liking. I took a medium-grit sanding block to the edges and various other bits. A sliver of wood lifted on the chieftain's side, so I pried it up and incorporated it into the wear.
I sponged on another thin layer of sealer, let it sit until it was just this side of dry, just a tiny bit tacky, then I took it in the bathroom and rubbed cocoa powder all over it.
Cocoa powder is a fantastic antiquing medium. It yields a very fine reddish brown dust. It also smells nice. This knocked down the finish enough for my liking. I got this tip off Propnomicon. You should bookmark his blog, by the way. It's awesome.
I installed a leather thong I'd soaked in the same mixture of brown paint and left to dry, and made a simple sliding closure with three beads. Pull it up, twist the cord above the knob, pull it down, and slide the center bead up to hold it in place. It's absolutely secure and fastens one-handed in about two seconds. I'm really proud of that. The original fastening was -- blech -- elastic, and put too much tension on the knob for my liking. I gave the beads a brown wash, too, since they were super-white when I put them on.
The box got a coat of the same microcrystalline wax, and another strategic smudge of cocoa powder here and there.
The board is a piece of 70/30 linen/cotton canvas, tough as hell and with uneven threads in it for texture. I washed it first, in case it might shrink later, then penciled in the squares with a ruler. I painted the pattern in black acrylics, making no effort to get it completely dark. I left it intentionally rough and sketchy. The grain of the fabric was heavy and uneven, which helped with the worn and kind of primitive, handmade look. Then I took the whole thing and ran a sanding block over it several times to get it kind of fuzzy and worn in places. I twisted it back and forth, ran it over the back of a chair, stretched it both ways, and just generally beat it up for about half an hour. I was hoping to soften it a bit more than I managed to, but it does feel like something older than it is.
I got the whole thing wet, sprayed it with walnut ink, then immediately washed it out. I did that three times, until it was a bit dingy rather than stained. to keep the edges from raveling, I went around it with a blanket stitch in black embroidery floss, then used a running stitch around the grid to set it off a bit.
The paper is a scrap of parchment-colored scrapbooking paper. I lettered it, creased it, crumpled it a tiny bit, flattened it, rubbed cocoa powder over it, then washed it off. Voila!
Overall, a success. I'm proud of it. And now Shara has her Jetan set. One of the few things she managed to bring with her off-world, along with her custom one of a kind Sharps radium rifle that's been handed down through her family for . . . about 800 years, actually. I can't replicate that, but it's so seriously cool.
Obviously the set's seen a bit of wear, and a bit of combat.
To see a list of rules and pieces, and to learn more about the game, you can go go to the ERBList site's page on Jetan.
So, that's what I spent a good chunk of last week doing. Hope you enjoy the pics, and my geeking out. Hopefully at least a few of you will love the idea as much as I do -- I know I have other ERB/Barsoom fans reading me.
Kaor, and have an awesome weekend.
X-posted from Dreamwidth. Comment count:
This was incredibly labor-intensive, but I am so proud of it.
I may have mentioned that I love Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars books. They are pulpy, seriously problematic in terms of gender and race issues, and occasionally incredibly stupid, but I adore them.
I got a kick in the butt now that we've begun the new gaming campaign, and since our continuum's Mars is canonically Barsoom, I decided I wanted to play a lady panthan (a wandering warrior of no fixed affiliation or abode; a sort of knight-errant). I mean, hot. We've recently touched on how my characters acquire things. I decided that Shara should have a traveling Jetan set so that she could strike up a game of Martian chess with friendly fellow travelers and maybe win herself a bit of cash.
So I made it. Shrug.
I love breaking out the lanterns.
I went with cream and black on orange and dark brown pieces, and a black and natural linen canvas color for the field, instead of the traditional yellow and black.
Frankly? I don't like yellow. I really do not. No offense to all you yellow-loving people. It's not you, it's me.
I designed the pieces super-loosely on the descriptions. Like, you probably wouldn't be able to trace my line of thought for anything but the fliers and the chief and queen. Possibly the dwar and padwar.
Accuracy by the books was not my intent. Rather, it's speculative.
Some Earth chess sets are quite stylized, and I see no reason why Jetan would be any different.
Sargon says the pieces are too complicated and not distinct enough from one another. He totally has a point. I posit, though, that these more complicated designs are based on accepted abstract symbols used in sets of this type, so they'd be recognizable to experienced players, which almost everyone on Barsoom is.
It's visually appealing, though, and I did a good job giving it a consistent feel.
I just arranged the pieces attractively; this is not part of an actual game.
Actually, I stink at strategic games like this.
Shara doesn't though. I don't feel too rotten. She's, like, a hundred and eighty something. She's good at lots of things.
I love the design of the whole thing. It has a lot of character and presence. I think so, anyway.
The only shot I got of the little score card I made. My lady panthan was beating the snot out of her pirate boyfriend. Yes, I made up letters and numbers. That's the equivalent of cursive, not type.
The box is this little wooden thing with a thin wooden lid that is flexible like paper. I lined the inside with dirtied-up gold paper.
I used the same design on the side as I did on the chief (king) pieces.
And here's the princess (queen) design.
The bottom. Love.
The only shot I got of the back.
The pieces fit perfectly into the little wooden box. I was so delighted by this I spent about ten minutes just taking the pieces out and putting them back in. The score card folds and goes in under the folded canvas board. I was equally delighted by the little thong fastener I devised.
The lights are down. I think Shara and her pirate were sexing each other up by this point.
Boring-ass making-of:
I used washes of acrylic paint over wood to get the orange and the brown, the designs were then painted in black.
For the game pieces, I scuffed them up with medium sandpaper and rubbed them down with microcrystalline wax so they wouldn't stick to each other and pull off the paint.
For the box, I sponged on matte sealer unevenly over the designs.
Next, I cut a piece of frame spacer to length and fixed it in the bottom of the box to keep the pieces from rolling forward.
Then I crumpled up a sheet of thick gold scrapbooking paper and went over it with a brown wash. I dabbed it off unevenly, dried it, cut a strip to size, and glued it in. This is the part I wish I had done a little differently. The lid came out really stiff, a lot stiffer than it was to start with. It looks fine, though.
I took super-fine (400-600 grit) sandpaper to the whole outer surface to soften the finish, which was too glossy for my liking. I took a medium-grit sanding block to the edges and various other bits. A sliver of wood lifted on the chieftain's side, so I pried it up and incorporated it into the wear.
I sponged on another thin layer of sealer, let it sit until it was just this side of dry, just a tiny bit tacky, then I took it in the bathroom and rubbed cocoa powder all over it.
Cocoa powder is a fantastic antiquing medium. It yields a very fine reddish brown dust. It also smells nice. This knocked down the finish enough for my liking. I got this tip off Propnomicon. You should bookmark his blog, by the way. It's awesome.
I installed a leather thong I'd soaked in the same mixture of brown paint and left to dry, and made a simple sliding closure with three beads. Pull it up, twist the cord above the knob, pull it down, and slide the center bead up to hold it in place. It's absolutely secure and fastens one-handed in about two seconds. I'm really proud of that. The original fastening was -- blech -- elastic, and put too much tension on the knob for my liking. I gave the beads a brown wash, too, since they were super-white when I put them on.
The box got a coat of the same microcrystalline wax, and another strategic smudge of cocoa powder here and there.
The board is a piece of 70/30 linen/cotton canvas, tough as hell and with uneven threads in it for texture. I washed it first, in case it might shrink later, then penciled in the squares with a ruler. I painted the pattern in black acrylics, making no effort to get it completely dark. I left it intentionally rough and sketchy. The grain of the fabric was heavy and uneven, which helped with the worn and kind of primitive, handmade look. Then I took the whole thing and ran a sanding block over it several times to get it kind of fuzzy and worn in places. I twisted it back and forth, ran it over the back of a chair, stretched it both ways, and just generally beat it up for about half an hour. I was hoping to soften it a bit more than I managed to, but it does feel like something older than it is.
I got the whole thing wet, sprayed it with walnut ink, then immediately washed it out. I did that three times, until it was a bit dingy rather than stained. to keep the edges from raveling, I went around it with a blanket stitch in black embroidery floss, then used a running stitch around the grid to set it off a bit.
The paper is a scrap of parchment-colored scrapbooking paper. I lettered it, creased it, crumpled it a tiny bit, flattened it, rubbed cocoa powder over it, then washed it off. Voila!
Overall, a success. I'm proud of it. And now Shara has her Jetan set. One of the few things she managed to bring with her off-world, along with her custom one of a kind Sharps radium rifle that's been handed down through her family for . . . about 800 years, actually. I can't replicate that, but it's so seriously cool.
Obviously the set's seen a bit of wear, and a bit of combat.
To see a list of rules and pieces, and to learn more about the game, you can go go to the ERBList site's page on Jetan.
So, that's what I spent a good chunk of last week doing. Hope you enjoy the pics, and my geeking out. Hopefully at least a few of you will love the idea as much as I do -- I know I have other ERB/Barsoom fans reading me.
Kaor, and have an awesome weekend.
X-posted from Dreamwidth. Comment count: