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Three Awesome DIY Pokémon TCG Projects

 |  How-to's  |  Pokémon

These 3 Pokémon TCG DIY projects are perfect whether you’re doing it to save a few bucks, because you enjoy taking on DIY projects, or both. They’re great projects for all ages and don’t require any special skills or materials. This makes them perfect for parents wanting to get involved with their child’s Pokémon hobby.

Check out the projects below:

DIY Pokémon TCG Deck Box

An easy, and very cheap DIY project is to make your own deck box. This comes in handy as it’ll help protect cards when travelling and note in use.

For this project you’ll need:

  • Construction Paper (or multiple pieces of printer paper taped together)
  • A pen, pencil or marker
  • Scissors
  • Tape
  • Glue (Super Glue works best)
  • Thin cardboard (an empty box of coke cans will do just fine)
  • A deck of Pokémon cards

 

We’re going to start by making the template for your deck. Once completed it should look something like this:

DIY Pokemon Deck Box

 

Start by placing your deck on top of your sheet of paper standing upright. Then with your other hand trace around your deck.

 

Now tilt the deck forward so the card’s fronts are on the paper. Trace around the deck again. This time though, you’ll want to add a flap to each of the sides. The flaps should be in the rough shape of a trapezoid.

 

Return the deck to the original upright position and tilt it onto its side. Trace. Repeat for the opposite side.

After this is done return the deck to the starting position once again, now lay the deck back so the front of your cards face up. Trace around the deck. Add trapezoid flaps to the sides like you did for the front.

Lift the deck so that it’s now upside down with the tops of the cards facing the paper. Trace. Lay the deck down so the cards face down again. Trace.

Now you’ll want to take your template and tape it to your cardboard. Cut out the template. Don’t worry too much about getting it perfect, we can work on tidying everything up later.

Take your scissors and score along the lines you drew on the template. This will make it so that the cardboard cleanly folds into your box shape. Make sure to score the flaps you drew on the front and back as well.

Once this is done, you can begin the assembly of your box. Fold everything into place with the flaps for the front and back on the inside of the box. While holding the box together, place your deck inside and ensure that everything fits.

If so, remove the deck and let the box unfold. Take your glue and begin by adding a few small drops on the outside of one of the front flaps. Now bring this flap and the side of the box together. Hold until the glue dries. Repeat this process for each of your flaps going one at a time on both the front and back.

Once this is done, your box should be good to go. Simply trim the edges if they are uneven, and if you like, you can cut the flap to be a triangle or semicircle shape so that it’s easier to insert into the deck box.

If you like you can design the box with stickers or a printed Pokémon design as well.

DIY Pokémon TCG Card Sleeves

All you’ll need for this project is a pack of trading card collector pages and a pair of scissors.

You’ll want to choose pages with 9 pockets. You’ll be able to make 6 sleeves per page and with most packs providing 25 pages, you should be able to make 150 sleeves or so. This works out to be a few dollars cheaper than buying a similar amount of sleeves like KMC Hyper Mats. ($7.49 for the DIY sleeves, $12.39 for Hyper Mats)

Start by cutting off the small strip used for placing the page in a binder. Be careful not to cut the sleeves!

Once that’s done, you’ll need to make 4 cuts along the red lines in the diagram below:

Homemade pokemon card sleeves

 

Cut as close to the dotted lines as possible, but make sure not to cut on the dotted lines as you don’t want to tear the sleeves open.

Once that’s done, you should have 6 sleeves ready to place Pokémon TCG cards in. They are larger sleeves perfect for double sleeving. Since they’re a bit cheaper than other sleeve options you can place your less valuable cards in them for protection.

DIY Pokémon TCG Mat

Making your own, high quality Pokémon TCG Play Mat is easy. There are two ways to go about it. You could purchase a blank play mat to start with. The benefits of this approach are that the play mats usually have a non slip backing, however they may not be the exact size you were looking for.

The second method involves purchasing a yard of vinyl fabric or similar material. This method requires a bit more effort as you’ll have to cut the fabric to size, and in the end you won’t have a non slip backing, but some may find the extra choice in terms of size worth it.

Either way, once you have your mat ready, it’s just a matter of designing the mat. You can do this by hand with a permanent marker/paint marker, or by printing on transfer paper and then ironing the designs on to the board.

If you elect for the hand drawn method, make sure to use a ruler for clean lines and to write clearly. You could always blend both methods together as well if you wanted to include pictures of Pokémon and aren’t confident in your own drawing ability.

The beauty of this DIY is that you’re completely in charge of the mat’s design.

Have you done your own DIY Pokémon TCG project?

Share pictures of your favorite DIY project on Facebook and be sure to keep an eye out at your local tournaments and gatherings as many Pokémon TCG players have a DIY project of some form that they’d be proud to share.