Hi everybody! Sorry it’s been awhile…truth be told I’ve been busy not having any weekend plans. And it’s been great. I was headed into this weekend with the same itinerary: hangout at home. YES! My favorite!
But, alas, there are always projects and chores that need to be done at home as well. Have I mentioned our basement remodel? Well we are far from done, but hubby helped me make these adorable tiles that look like scrabble letters to hang on an empty wall down there, which means one less area of concern!
They are SUPER easy to make – but if you ask nicely I’d probably be willing to whip some up for you, or a friend (they would make great gifts!). Here is what you need:
Plywood
Sharpie Paint Pen
Tung Oil
Scissors, Paper, Paintbrush
First, figure out what you want to spell. I wanted to include our first names and our last name so the layout took me awhile to configure and make a “scrabble board” I liked the look of. I practiced on paper so that we knew how many tiles we would need (since the names would be sharing letters at certain points). For sizing we settled on 5×5 tiles, purchasing a couple of 1x5s and cutting them into 20 even tiles. You could easily scale this up or down depending on how large of a space you had to work with.
Next, I went to work on stenciling the letters and points on the tiles. The points are optional, but we wanted ours to look like legit scrabble tiles so I included them in my stencil. I am fairly confident at free-handing any lettering I attempt, but for this one I made a little guide to help me. I cut two windows out of a piece of cardstock that provided openings to draw the letters and points within. This allowed me to make sure all my letters would be the same height. Another option would be purchasing actual stencils to help you get the job done and stencil accurately.
The letters dried almost immediately by using the Sharpie Paint Pen, so the only thing left to do was seal the tiles with a coat of tung oil.
At last, I finished! It only took me 5 weeks to find time to do each of those steps that were oh so easy and actually only took about 30 total minutes of my time but you know, it’s hard to get stuff done! Then came the most satisfying part: hanging!
We went the easy route and used command strips to hang them. If you have a thicker piece of wood you may want to attach hanging hardware to the back of each tile. If you are spelling a single word or name it would also be cute to simply set these on a mantel or shelf for display.
Ta-da! So happy to fill up that empty wall down there! This craft was extra-satisfying because Codee actually thought it was a good idea from the get go. Usually I tell him how I want to decorate something (ok he just walks in after I already did it) and he doesn’t find it as charming and cute as I do. But this time he was actually excited about getting our little family scrabble board up on the wall. Double win!
Thanks for reading! Until next time!
Lots of Love, Katie
wildly widler 