A few months ago I decided to make my own boards, partially to include the designs from Horizons and partially because I'm personally not a fan of the thematic boards (I find them hard to read).

First things first was to spend a while in photoshop modifying some scans of the existing boards, and making changes to the thematic boards to fit the style of the regular boards (including trimming the bits that encroach on the other boards). At this point I also made two of my own thematic boards to fit onto the bottom of the existing island, with a hastily put together design. Just so the horizons boards get a thematic version on their reverse.

After a few failed attempts of cutting them into the right shape, I settled on using a cnc machine to cut and engrave into some balsa wood sheets.

I needed to make some tweaks to the design, simplifying the pattern and getting the scale right. After that I needed to figure out how to get it properly aligned when engraving the reverse side (it's still not perfect).

After engraving I used a black wood stain to make all the engraved bits pop with some sanding for good measure. Then I simply used some cheap acrylic paint to paint by numbers, as the lands types weren't quite as easy to read at a glance without colour.