This ornament is for all the word nerds out there :) I mean no insult to anyone, believe me my family is right there with you. Scrabble is one of those games you either love or hate. I personally am in the hate camp but most of my family enjoys sitting down for a highly competitive game of Scrabble.
This Scrabble Christmas onament is not a Full of Great Ideas original idea. I have seen it all over the web for a few years now. I am not sure where it originated but I assume since it is on Marthas site, she might be the official creator. You know how it goes, someone creates and hundreds recreate.
I purchased the Scrabble set at ValueVillage (our local thrift store) for $2.99. I would have loved it to be $1.99 but was willing to spend $2.99. It is amazing how $1 bothers me when I am thrifting. I made sure there were lots of tiles in the box before snatching it up. I had originally planned to frame "I Love You" but never got around to making that. Perhaps in January when I am on a $0 budget again, I will do it :)
Since you are limited by the letters in Scrabble, be sure to decide on what words you want to spell before you start gluing. There are only 1 or 2 of many tiles, so spell carefully. I knew I wanted to make one for the family members who absolutely love Scrabble, so their names got first priority. I did make one for us too just because I think they are freakin cute!
I used my husbands fancy dancy hand miter saw to cut the tile trays. My husband convinced me this was the best method of cutting the tile trays since they are far too small to cut with the electric one. He threw into the conversation that I could possibly loose a finger with the big electrical one. So small hand miter it was.
I carefully arranged all the ornament names I wanted to make in order to get the most names on each tray. Since there are only 4 trays in the game, I wanted to uses them wisely.
I marked where the tiles ended with pencil and carefully cut them with the miter saw.
The edged came out a little rough, so I lightly sanded with a fine grit sandpaper.
I marked the middle of the tile tray with pencil and screwed in a hanging eye.
If you have girly hands like me and this step hurts, use a pencil tip to help turn the eye into the wood. That is what I had to do to save my fingers. I prefer the eye to be a half turn more than what I did with these so the ornament hangs straight, but once I started to put the tiles down, I realized this was my only option.
I applied a thick line of Gorilla Wood Glue and stuck each tile down. This glue does not dry clear but almost a light wood tone. So if you get any on the tiles just clean it off with a rag, but you dont have to worry too much. If you dont have this on hand, you can use any wood glue, craft glue or even hot glue. They wont be handled that much so they really dont have to be cemented down.
Here are how a few turned out. I absolutely love them and cant wait until Christmas to share.
So for $2.99, I have made 5 custom Christmas ornaments and I still have 2 more trays left! What a deal!
This could also be made for teachers gifts. Spell out their names and they can place the tile tray on their desk. I will have to see what letters I have left :)
What do you think? Have you made other crafts with Scrabble tiles?
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