Time for tea and some scrabble coasters?

Do you have an old scrabble set you never use except for Christmas holidays and snow days? Give it a new lease of life by turning it into an exciting crafting project! 

Scrabble tiles have become one of those fashionable accessories, lots of people are making scrabble earrings and necklaces from old tiles and the price of scrabble tiles on ebay is a little south of extortionate! I cheated and bought an old set from a local tip shop for all of a £1.

 I have used tip shops to purchase everything from furniture to crafting resources as I find that tip shops are a great source of various bits and bobs; particularly in well off areas like Stratford upon Avon: a better quality of tat obviously!  

So to create your scrabble coasters (or jewellery) grab some superglue and your tiles. Simples!

I had hours of fun trying out various options for my words. I decided on four letter squares as they comfortably fit a cuppa plus this created the option for a series of silly phrases. I had initially used these blank squares too although I decided that there were better combination of words available with the letters I had.  

A word of warning: most scrabble sets only come with one 'x' and 'q' and (so it seemed) hundreds of 'e' and 't' tiles. If you are planning particular words or phrases you may need to scour several charity shop scrabble sets to complete your project. 

Once you have decided on the layout of your tiles put a thin line of glue down the edge of one tile and carefully place the next tile on top of the glue. I put the tiles into pairs then joined them into words before attaching the whole coaster together.

 To make each coaster waterproof add a thin layer of wooden varnish, make sure this is clear drying or you will stain the wood. If you want to highlight one particular word put a thin layer of light wooden stain onto the word before gluing the word in place. This could be used to highlight a person's name to make wedding favours or to pick out a message in the text. I love these two ideas definately need to get saving for another few scrabble sets before I can start on these projects though!

So here is my final coaster set. I am really happy with the way they turned out, especially my dual meaning "Bear hugs warm food" (English win) which makes me giggle every time I put down my cuppa. I wanted to create four distinct coasters which aren't necessarily linked together with a theme so I have from left to right top to bottom

1.  The course of a relationship? Cozy friendship, First date, A sneaky kiss and finally big soppy love
2. My favourite bear hugging a plate of stew hot out of the oven
3. Friday nights? Glugging the cheap vino and carefully pouring the more expensive stuff
4. I like the idea of this one, a nerd (which I definately am) creating a nest and becoming a home bird

Well that's my interpretation anyway! What words can you  make?

 

Happy Crafting

L x