Pinspiration - Scrabble Wall Art Tutorial

This week Katy at Sycamore Stirrings has thrown down the Pinterest Challenge gauntlet.  And it was just the nudge that I needed to finally make my best friend's housewarming gift - after all, she only moved in in November - time to get a wriggle on!

When I first started pinning like crazy on Pinterest I found this cute little shadow box Scrabble art and I made one just like it for my husband for our 5th anniversary.  Then I got to thinking that it would be great to have your family's names intersecting with the Scrabble letters.  So, a quick purchase of 300 vintage Scrabble tiles on Etsy later and I was ready.  Well, ready to procrastinate for 6 months anyway.  But procrastinate no more - this week is the pinterest challenge and I took action!

I have put together some brief instructions for anyone else who would like to make one.  It's a no brainer really, but if you're an over-thinker like me sometimes it's easy to get bogged down in the details.

What you'll need -

1 Ribba Shadow box (from Ikea - also available in black)
Vintage Scrabble tiles (available from Etsy)
Glue (I used Selleys All Fix)
Acid Free 12" square coloured scrapbooking card stock (bought mine from Spotlight)
A Skewer
Cotton buds
A grid ruler
Adhesive Foam Squares (available where you buy scrapbooking supplies)
A piece of cardboard (approx 400gsm) larger than the scrapbooking card stock
Acid Free glue stick

What to do -

1. Do a mock up of your letters to determine how they look best.  I suggest taking photos of your options so you can compare and remember how you had them.

2. Using an acid free gluestick, paste the coloured scrapbooking cardstock to the 400gsm cardboard.  Trim the 400gsm card to size if needed.

3. Next lay your tiles out on your coloured card stock to get the posistion how you want it.  Make a mark with a pencil where you will glue your first tile - then everything will flow from that space.

4.  Use the grid ruler to line your tiles up and then glue them down, spacing them approximately 1/8" apart.  Use the skewer and cotton buds to wipe away excess glue - be careful here, you don't want to mark your paper with too much glue.

5.  Place double sided sticky foam dots around the edge of your 12" card stock.  Carefully line up and stick the matt from the frame to the sticky foam dots.  The dots just give a further dimension to the project. 

6.  Place matt and card stock back in the frame and you're done! 

 Done!   Head on over to Katy's blog and check out what other peeps have been inspired to do.

I'm also linking up with We did it Wednesday at Sew Much Ado.