DIY I Spy Travel Game with Free Printable

Next time you are planning a long road trip with the family, consider making a set of these DIY I Spy travel games. Not only will it help keep the kids occupied, it will help start your family vacation off on the right foot — after all, if everyone is busy playing this fun game, they won’t have time to argue and fight. (You should also check out this collection of Printable Travel Games for Family Vacations.)

I backed our printable I Spy game cards with fabric that had vehicles of all sorts on it. If you don’t have fabric, you can always use the same techniques to add colorful paper to the back of your cards. By using clear Con-Tact paper to seal the cards, they will hopefully last for many family road trips!

Supplies Needed to Make the I Spy Travel Game:

Printable I Spy Game Cards (see below)
Heavy Printer Paper
Paper-Backed Fusible Web (affiliate link)
Fabric
Clear Con-Tact Paper or Laminating Machine
Binder Rings (affiliate link)

Tools Needed:

Printer
Iron
Scissors
Hole Puncher

Start out by downloading the 8 pages near the bottom of this post that feature the cards. I have created full sized JPG and PDF files for all of these pages. Download whichever version works best for you. Print out the cards onto heavy paper.

Let the ink on the cards dry completely and then cut the cards out. My pieces of fabric were smaller so I cut out each individual card. If you have a large piece of fabric, you can cut out the cards after you attach them to the fabric.

The next step is to iron the fusible web to the back side of your fabric. I cut my fusible web pieces large enough to cover 2 of the game cards. Cut yours to whatever size works best for you. Let the fusible web cool

Now this part can be a tiny bit tricky… Carefully lift up one of the corners of the fusible web paper that is stuck to the fabric. Lift it off most of the way. Try to leave one edge or corner still stick to the fusible web; however, if it totally comes off, that is fine too.

Set the cards, picture side up, on top of the fusible web and then cover them with the paper you peeled up. Run the iron over the paper until the cards are stuck to the fabric. The paper is used to protect the iron from the fusible web.

Let the cards cool and then you can remove the paper and cut them out. Now you should see the picture on one side and the fabric on the other.

Cut two pieces of clear Con-Tact paper for each card. You will want the pieces of Con-Tact paper to be a little large than the cards. Peel the paper off of one piece, lay it on your work surface, and set a card in the center of it. Peel the paper off another piece of clear Con-tact paper and carefully put that on top of the card so it is encased between the Con-Tact paper.

Trim the edges of the Con-Tact paper.

Now all that is left to do is punch a hole in the center of each card and put them on the binder ring.

There are a few different ways you can play this game. You can pass out the same number of cards to each player and everyone should look for the items on their cards. Make a discard pile and as a player finds their items, they should discard that card. Whever discards all of their cards first wins!

If you would rather play a cooperative game, spread out the cards so everyone can see them and you can all hunt for the items together. To make it a little more challenging, you can set a time limit. You can also make up your own game!

Now, here are all of the cards you can download… You can either choose the JPG link or the PDF link.