Scrabble Tiles!

Pin It I have been wanting to make scrabble tile necklaces FOREVER.  I've had a package of scrabble tiles hanging around for years since I made this (craft fail) door hanger for my husband's office years ago.  (Sweet guy- he used it anyway!)  I figured this project would be the perfect way to use up the extra - as well as some of my super cute papers!  I found a tutorial here and I had some glossy accents and mod podge, so I had everything I needed except... bails.

In my opinion, bails are ridiculously overpriced.  I looked for them EVERYWHERE.  I figured at $1 each at my local bead store was a bit much, but I was wrong.  Even Oriental Trading (remember when they used to be cheaper than other places?) let me down.  I finally bought some at my local craft store using a coupon so that I could finally make some of these. 

A quick note about pricing.  DO NOT buy scrabble tiles on Amazon.  I checked out Amazon thinking I might buy some more, but they are crazy overpriced there!  They want 20 dollars for 100 tiles.  This is more expensive than the entire game!  I saw a comment that suggested buying them directly from Hasbro.  You can get replacement parts for many of their games HERE.  The cost of 100 tiles on their site?  $6.50!!  Plus you get 4 racks and a tile pouch in case you want to craft something with those too.  :)  BTW- I totally am trying to think up some other crafts I can make with board game pieces.  Monopoly money origami maybe?

The fun part of this project was picking out papers.  I found most of the the papers I used in my Christmas/holiday stacks, but there were a few cute finds in the American Girl paper pack as well.  The tutorial tip about making a template card is really helpful & makes the process of picking out papers lots of fun.  I also used the template to trace out the piece I wanted on the back of the patterned paper and then glued the scrabble tile where I had drawn the outline.  That helped me to line up the pictures a lot more accurately.

This was an easy project to do in stages (10 minutes here, 10 minutes there- perfect for toddler watching) but I'd definitely recommend making them in bulk. Don't expect perfection, though.  As with any project, there is a bit of a learning curve.   Several of my tiles have bubbles or mistakes, as you'll see. Anyway, enough talk- here are my finished scrabble tiles!

 Some closeups

 Slightly misaligned- this was before I tried the template technique

 Love this one

 Some mistakes- didn't get the glossy accents right on the top of the polar bear

 Too bad about the bubbles on the owl.  I tried to fix it, but too late.  Too bad, because I love owls.