How to Create the Perfect Bingo Home Game

March 16, 2015March 16, 2015 dotcomwomen

OK, so you’ve decided to get your friends round, have a few drinks and play a few games of bingo. But you don’t quite have all the necessary equipment and now you’re stuck. Fear not, because there are plenty of tricks you can perform to help create the perfect night of bingo. Of course, you could simply turn on your computer and take part in one of the many bingo games available online.

However, if you’ve got eight friends coming round to enjoy some action, they probably won’t want to huddle around a single computer screen. Fortunately, we’re here to help with an essential guide on how to make an at-home bingo game.

The Tickets

The first thing you’ll need to do is make some game cards. First you need to decide how many balls you’re going to use as this will determine how your game card looks. A standard 90-ball game of bingo will use a 9×3 game card with five numbers on each line. For those of you that don’t want to create your own cards and ensure a random range of numbers, you can simply buy a booklet of tickets from your local supermarket.

Necessary ingredients:

Rectangular pieces of paper

A ruler and a pencil

An ability to randomly assign numbers between 1 and 90

You can also print off this template:

The Balls

The next thing you’ll need is some balls and a bowl. If you’ve already got some bingo balls, then go ahead and use those. If not, you can make your own using a batch of ping pong balls and a permanent marker. On each ball you simply need to write a number from one to 90 and then put them in the bowl.

ping pong bingo balls — Image courtesy MarthaStewart.com

Necessary ingredients:

A suitable amount of white ping pong balls (a 90-number game needs 90 balls)

Some Sellotape

A stencil

A black marker to colour in the stencil and leave a number on the balls

The Pens

The final thing you need to do in order to set up the perfect bingo home game is ensure everyone has enough pens. Although a standard Biro will work, it’s better to offer your players a felt-tipped pen so they can make the numbers as efficiently as possible.

The Prizes

Once you’ve conquered the basics, the only thing left for you to do is create some prizes. Although cash is often given away in regular online bingo games, you’ll want yours to be a more interesting affair, which is why you should make your own prizes. Now, these gifts can be bingo themed, such as a bingo ball snow globe, or you can simply take some other things from around the house and turn them into a gift.

The only barrier to what you can create is your imagination. But to give you some inspiration, here are a few homemade bingo prizes you can make at home:

Quirky Soap Dispenser: Take an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s, wash it out and fill it with soap then take the pump from an old bottle of soap and stick it to the top and you’ve got a stylish-looking gift for someone.

Chocolate Bouquets: The only thing better than money is chocolate and you can easily make an edible tree by taking a box of Ferrero Rocher, a plant pot, a long stick, some pins and a polystyrene ball. After inserting the stick into the ball and then the pot, you can pin the chocolates onto the ball until it’s completely covered and looks like a chocolate tree.

Homemade Cocktails: The perfect prize during a night of entertainment is alcohol and you can furnish your guests with your own fruity (but potent) concoctions using a few simple ingredients. Firstly, take some alcohol you have lying around the house and combine it with as many fruit juices as you’ve got. Once you’ve done that, take some old miniature bottles (buy some if necessary) and pour in the mix. Leave them to chill in the fridge and then unveil them whenever someone shouts “full house”.