While putting together our ideas for Lou’s Star Wars birthday party, we wanted to create a game that the kiddos could play, that we could use after the party was over, and that would be ridiculous and on theme with it all.  Since we were themeing the party around the Original Trilogy, it felt necessary to add this iconic scene to our decor.

The Sarlacc Pit is actually the center of a lot of discussion/arguments in the McKinley household.  Bennett is a huge fan of Boba Fett and he continues to try and convince me that he made it out alive eventually.  I’m not sold on this theory.

Anywho!  Before I get too off subject, here’s a non-tutorial of how we put it all together.

Let’s talk boards first.  Yes, of course you can make your own.  But we chose not to out of 1) laziness and 2) time constraints.  We were about to head out of town for our bi-annual family beach vacation and adding a wood cutting project to our list sounded like too much.  We found sturdy, blank, premade boards at our local craft supply store.  Boom.  Done.  We also decided to buy only one, to take up less yard space for the game itself, and to have only one item to use.  It’s the same game, you just stand on the same side as your opponents.  Not a big deal, right?

Not all cornhole boards are alike.  Some of the storebought ones are SO FLIMSY and you’ll regret being cheap about your purchase if you want something that’ll be used in your yard more than once.  I believe we picked our single board up for $35.  Yikes.  But like said…it’s solid and I’m happy we have a new yard game for when we host another party, or just friends in general.

If you’re wanting to buy one online, because you can’t find it locally, I’d recommend this set on Amazon (affiliate link).  The boards are unfinished and it looks like actual solid construction.  You get what you pay for, you know?

Louis was super excited to be in on the spray painting element of this project.  We grabbed a “sand” colored paint and coated the entire board in it for our base color.

And I cut this design out of sticky-backed vinyl and slapped it on the bottom of the board.

We wanted to make some bean bags with characters that we could toss into the sarlacc pit.  The easiest decision was to make the teams based upon the good guys and the bad guys.  I grabbed some oatmeal colored duck cloth and cut them into 7″ x 7″ squares.  The regulation sized bean bags for these games are 6″ x 6″….which meant I gave myself 1/2″ on each side for seam allowances.  Easy peasy!

Though I’m not totally in love with how my transfer paper worked, we did print some old school images of Chewbacca, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Jabba, Boba Fett, and the Emperor.  Some adhered better than others, but we just went with it.  Perfection is boring, right? (That’s what I tell myself when things don’t always go amazingly well…..)

I think the end results were super fun and I’m in love with this new addition to our yard party games.

Before you go, please make sure to visit the rest of the goodies, downloads and tutorials that we created for this special 8th Birthday Party for our kiddo!  (Some of the links won’t be live until they’re officially shared throughout the week.  Don’t panic if it leads you to a dead end just yet!)  And if you want to see it all together, head to the birthday recap post HERE.