Gettin' Crafty! - Scrabble Tile Ornaments

Have you been getting crafty this Christmas season? Have you gotten the itch to burn your fingertips on hot glue or smell the heady scent of Modge Podge or cover something with felt or paint?

Well a few of my friends and I have been getting our "craft fix" on this winter season preparing gifts and tree ornaments and all manner of other creative projects. We usually get together for a casual "Girl's Night" once a week if possible so for the past month or so we've been hauling our boxes, bags and containers of felt, beads, wire, glue and buttons to each other's houses for Craft Night. We worked on our own crafts or projects or borrowed pieces and supplies from each other to try something new.

Here is an example in my new favourite Christmas Tree Ornament - Scrabble Tile Words

My good friend C (author of "Blessed Motherhood") scoured the local thrift shops and found TWO intact Scrabble board games for us to ravage. We spent about two+ craft nights working on this fun project.

What we used:
- Numerous Scrabble tiles, enough to make many words
- Hot glue gun
- Card stock paper (we used ugly pages from C's scrap booking card stock booklet)
- Ribbon or twine for the hanging loop
- Felt for the backing
Step One:
- Spend a fun half hour or so making your Scrabble words on a table of other flat surface that won't be disturbed.
- We chose to do Christmas-relevant words like "Bells" or "Snow" or "Love". A few were a little long like "Sleigh" or "Jingle" but we just kept making as many as we could with the letters we had left.
- While C worked on another craft, I got the words ready, mostly making one for her and one for me.
- We found many of the "popular" letters were used up quickly, like "S" and "G".

Step Two:
Have Ready:
a) Glue gun all hot and bothered, er, hot and ready by now.
b) Cut a piece of card stock to fit your word. (You can trim it later if it's too big but it works and looks better if the card stock is barely smaller than the word.)
- Hot glue a line or dots onto the card stock and gently place your tiles (correctly spelled) as straight as possible.
- Press the tiles firmly together and onto the card stock.
* I started out wanting to glue between the tiles to make sure the word didn't bend, but once all the glue and layers are on that doesn't happen anyway.

((Now we found it worked to either do ALL of the card stock Step Two at once before going on to the next step
OR if you have a crafting buddy, have one person start the card stock step then the second person start the next step.))

Step Three:
Have ready: 
a) your cut ribbon or twine (we used both) pieces handy - they should be around 4-6 inches in length, for your loop hanger and 
b) cut pieces of felt (any colour, we used grey), to fit over the entire back of the word, covering the card stock, making the back look nice

- Place a small glob/dot of hot glue on the back, card stock side, of your word in the centre.
- Quickly place both ends of your ribbon onto the hot glue and gently press down to flatten, try to avoid burning your fingers! Oh and also try NOT to glue the loop on upside down as in my photo of the "INN" ornament...I was able to pull it off and fix it, though.
- While that glue is still warm and malleable, put more hot glue around the edges of the card stock and a few dots in the centre along the back of your word tiles.
- Place the cut piece of felt gently over the glue and move into place so it looks straight and gently press down to flatten (again, watch out for the hot glue!).

Step Four:
- Hang on your tree and enjoy your fun Scrabble Christmas Ornaments!!!


Note: I didn't take as many photos as I would have liked, but here are a couple other ideas.