It’s so wonderful to see a project come together after so many years. Our new wall of vintage framed games makes me happy every time I walk by.
I’ve been collecting games my whole life. Somehow I found it impossible to part company with the likes of Mystery Date, Stratego and Casper when I was in grade school. I started acquiring more games in high school, and by college, thrifting for old game boards was a sport. Million Dollar Man? Check! Bionic Woman, you bet! I collected gameboards that fell into four categories – old versions of classics, campy tv shows, beautiful art, and Disney.
From my grandmother, I have the original anagrams that became Scrabble. I have Persuasion from the 20s, Monopoly from the 30s, and dozens of interesting games from the 60s and 70s. They are so much fun to look at, and to play! Each game tells a story about the decade, and our culture. I love that.
Particularly in my 20s, I loved to thrift for games. I was living in Portland and fairly broke, but $10 on a nostalgic board was an attainable splurge. I had a plan for all the boards too. Someday when I was a parent, I’d frame them all and cover a wall with them.
Mostly these games sat in a closet, for the past 20 years. Occasionally we’d get them out and admire the campy 70s ones and wax nostalgic. I wanted to frame them but lacked the space and the money to undertake a custom job. Custom framing is expensive.
Then IKEA introduced a line of square frames that made my game wall dream come true. The line I bought seems to have been discontinued but I think the square frames in the RIBBA collection would work as well. They are only $15 and sized right to fit all but the giant boards (sorry vintage Risk and Game of Life!).
I purchased a dozen frames and started mounting my collection. At first we hung them over the kitchen table, with the bonus that you can take the games down off the wall and play through the glass.
Ultimately I wanted to show off more games, in a larger display. So this past week when we painted the kid’s playroom, I finally got all the games up on the wall. Well, not ALL the games, but a large grid of 9 of them. They look so great! My favorites are definitely the old Disney ones. I laid them all on the floor before hanging, to work out the arrangement.
We will probably rotate out a few games because there’s so many more in my collection that deserve the spotlight!
These make me so happy.
I LOVE THIS!! There’s so much cool here, I can’t stand it. You have inspired me to do something similar with all of the vintage books I have collected over the years. Yay! Quick question though–how did you secure the games to the frames? Hot glue? Super glue? Would love to know. Awesome.
They are just kinda sandwiched in there Amy!