Well, this project was a bit of a labour of love, and given that I completed it in under 7 days (around working full time), I am really happy with the outcome. If I was to do it again, there would be so many things I would do differently, but the birthday girl loved it, and that is all that really matters 
The daughter of one of my best friends turned 18 this weekend and had requested an Alice in Wonderland themed party. Two weeks ago, she requested a garden sized chess set! My friend was stressing, as they are expensive to rent and even more so to buy. So my mouth opened before my head could catch up and said I am sure I can create something!!
So, this was born of a need to keep costs down, using packing tubes and mounting board. Everything was picked up at a local scrap store, so was made at just the cost of the paint and a few hot glue sticks.
(My friend created the board by fusing black squares of fabric to an old tablecloth.)
The pawns came first, dictated by the size of the mounting board pieces we had. And then I worked out the relative size of the rest of the pieces, using the sizes of an actual chess set. All of the pieces are duplicates on both of the cross pieces, except the knight, which has two different pieces.
My two main takeaways from this is when using mounting board, try and use as many straight edges as possible, as this stuff is hard work to cut with scissors, and don’t try to cut out this many shapes in a 7 day period! My right hand is aching from the knife/scissors and my left forearm is aching from holding the ruler down firm when cutting with the knife.
And the positive takeaway was absolutely seeing people enjoying playing with it at the party 
Oh, and the birthday girls smile when she saw it of course
Congratulations! Your amazing Giant Chess Set is a Featured Project this week!