Modifed Ouija Planchette

Recently my daughter and her friends have begun dabbling in the occult.  Maybe I should be concerned about hell and damnation, but I'm just happy to see them put their phones away.  By some miracle they either don't know there are Ouija apps or they don't care.  If I had known all a board game needed was a little mysticism to attract this kind of attention, I would've claimed my Pente board had divination powers.  I just might try that yet.

For a while they used a Ouija board made out of paper and cardboard.  But we are now officially owners of an overpriced piece of chipboard and a hunk of plastic.

I was a little disappointed that it didn't come with any ominous rules, the girls already knew all the basics, but it still would have been fun to see them in print.  On the back of the box it does give some cheesy examples of what to ask, "Will my parents let me go to the concert? What should I wear?"  That's where I put my foot down and told them under no uncertain terms were they going to open a portal to hell just to find out what they should wear.

The board isn't horrible.  It's pretty sturdy, the graphics are still the William Fuld design.  The planchette on the other hand is the most boring shade of beige plastic imaginable. Probably the only kind of spirit you could attract with it would be one that would want to do your tax returns.  I guess that wouldn't be so bad, unless being on the other side of the veil transposes numbers, then you'd have a hard time explaining that one to the IRS.

Well I decided no daughter of mine was going summon malevolent spirits or be possessed by evil demons using institutional beige accessories.

First step is to remove the clear plastic piece.  Cover the planchette with Mod Podge, but not inside the ring.  Then add a single layer of tissue paper.  Notice I laid it right across the opening. Apply Mod Podge to outside edges of the planchette and fold the tissue over it.  Gently pat it all down.  You can pull the excess tissue paper off along the wet edge.

Design and make embellishments.  I won't lie. This part actually took me a while, which is a little ridiculous when the end product was a fairly simple design. But I changed my mind about a billion times before I got there. So I have this whole slew of twisted wire bits to adorn bottles at the next craft party.  All wire bits were hammered between two metal blocks. Just enough to make sure they would lay flat not enough to flatten the wire itself.

I used 18 gauge wire, but you could use a thin cord or small metal filigrees. I've even seen where people make awesome swirly designs with hot glue, although all I can do with a glue gun is make gloppy messes with lots of stringies.  The eye is from one of the local craft stores, but I can't remember which one. It came on a strand with five more just like it.

Glue the pieces in place and let dry.

I covered everything with Mod Podge except for the now covered opening, and the eye charm.  Again I used a single layer of tissue paper, covering everything including the eye.  I applied more Mod Podge and added on more lay one more layer, making sure to push into all the crevices around the wire and around the edge of the eye charm.  I slit the paper covering the eye and pushed it down around the eye piece. I added a small piece of tissue paper above and below the eye to flesh it out a little more and coated it in Mod Podge.

Once it was dry I trimmed around ring to make sure there was no tissue paper in the opening, otherwise the clear plastic piece wont fit. I painted it all black, including the inner ring and underneath.  After that dried I sponged on dark brown and metallics in brown, copper and gold. Any paint that I got on the eyeball I wiped off with a damp clean paintbrush.

Aside from me spending way more time than I should have making a few wire curlicues, this was a quick project and ended up looking way cool.  I'm sure all the really cool spirits will be hanging out at our house.

"My Ouija brings all the souls to the yard,
 And they're like, its better than yours,
 Damn right, its better than yours..."

...sorry, been spending too much time around teens lately.  

I also bought my daughter Ouija Board Nightmares: Terrifying True Tales.  It starts with a little mysterious history of the Ouija board, but it's mostly very short urban legend type stories.  There were quite a few stories about kids at sleepovers or parties just messing around with the Ouija and then...So absolutely perfect for the target audience at our abode.

Maybe they'll get into tarot cards next.  I would love to have a set of these Twin Peaks cards.