Emily Parker

A custom foamcore insert turns a chaotic box of cards, tokens, and miniatures into a tidy setup that pops open ready to play. If you’ve ever spent ten minutes hunting for a single cube before game night, building your own foamcore insert for a board game is one of the most satisfying weekend projects you … Read more

I built my first custom board game insert in 2019 and watched it pancake into a heap of cards within a month of vertical storage. The walls were too thin, the joints were weak, and gravity won every time. Designing a board game insert that survives being stored on its side comes down to three … Read more

Setting up a board game should not take longer than actually playing it. If you are tired of dumping components into a pile of baggies and spending fifteen minutes sorting meeples before the first turn, you are in the right place. In this guide, I will walk you through exactly how to make a game … Read more

I built my first board game insert out of foamcore in 2019, and it looked great for about six months. By the end of , the foam was dented, the glue lines were yellowing, and the lid no longer closed cleanly. That experience pushed me to test laminated chipboard for my next five projects, and … Read more

Bringing a board game on a trip used to mean cramming the original box into a suitcase and hoping the pieces survived the journey. Half the time, you would arrive to find tokens mixed together, cards bent out of shape, and a pile of baggies that had torn open somewhere over the Atlantic. I have … Read more

Nothing ruins a foam board project faster than watching your perfectly cut panel curl up at the edges minutes after you apply glue. I have been there, standing over a presentation board or terrain piece that warped beyond use, wondering what went wrong. The good news is that warping is entirely preventable once you understand … Read more

Setting up a complex board game can eat 10 to 15 minutes of your game night before the first player even takes a turn. I have stood in front of a pile of cubes, chits, and cards, sorting them by type one at a time, and watched my group drift to their phones while I … Read more

I’ve rolled dice on bare tabletops for years, and the clatter still drives my partner nuts. Last spring, I built my first magnetic dice tray for a weekly D&D campaign, and it changed our sessions overnight. The lid snapped shut with a satisfying click, the felt muffled every roll, and stray dice stopped flying off … Read more

I built my first card holder insert after watching a $400 Commander deck slide off the table for the third time during a game night. After testing seven designs over six weeks, I finally found one that actually works, and the secret is the angle. This guide walks through how to build a card holder … Read more

If you’ve ever set up a board game only to watch the board curl up like a taco, you already know how frustrating this problem is. A warped board slides pieces around, blocks fair gameplay, and can even damage the box over time. In this guide, I’ll walk you through exactly how to fix a … Read more