Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Finger Chess Board

So my Boyfriend and I had a great idea, I don't entirely know who came up with it first but we decided to make a finger chess set much like the one that Salvador Dali made.


I am a big fan of Dali and his surrealist work. The name of my blog comes from a famous Dali painting: The persistence of time (the one with all the droopy clocks). We made a few changes to the design of the chess pieces. We decided that each finger (and one big toe) would be a different piece. 

Pawn = Pinky finger
Rook = Big toes
Bishop = Index finger
Knight = Thumb
King = Middle finger
Queen = Ring Finger

I initially wanted them to be color coordinated to our favorite colors - his being blue and mine being green, or is it the other way around... I think it might be the other way around. But we decided on blue and pink.

 It was a long process to get the pieces the way they are. I didn't entirely know where to start. He took a good design leap and suggested that the fingers should be standing on something. We decided to go to our local dollar store, we picked up some plastic poker chips. Really awesome idea on his part. We first took molds of our fingers and toes. Then we glued the fingers to the bases. Step three had us making molds of the fingers on their bases. Step four had us mixing the plastic and pouring them into the molds. 

This whole process took a few months to do. Both of us having very busy schedules - we did as much as we could together. My boyfriend was able to find acrylic - plastic in the colors we needed for the board and he got them cut as well (by a professional so they're a bit more exact). We also decided that to distinguish the king and queen we would get rings - as crowns.

We got the rings from ebay, the down side is that we had to wait for what felt like 2 months for them to come. But it's finally finished!!! 




Till next time!