Source: twiceremembered.blogspot.com via Sara on Pinterest

We’ve had a lot of fun with our free-form Scrabble board.  Here’s how I made mine:

I started with a large black frame that had been sitting in our basement for a few years. It was a cheaper one, with just a plastic sheet in place of the glass, but the frame was a decent wood construction.  It measures 24×36.  In the original board, Kim @ The Twice Remembered Cottage used sheet metal on plywood.  I planned to do this, but the hubs was a little busy at this time and I don’t know how to turn on the saw let alone actually cut something, so I improvised.  (And was pretty pleased with myself.  🙂 )  I found at WalMart a 24×36 magnetic white board.  I’m guessing if one was patient enough, you could find one of these inexpensively on Craig’s List or at a yard sale.  I was ready to do this thing, so I paid full price, by far my greatest expense at $19.99.  I also used some plain white computer paper (which I ended up not needing), a bottle of Elmer’s glue, a bottle of ModPodge, a hot glue gun, an old dictionary, and some old-looking parchment paper.

I laid the white board out on the counter and smeared it with Elmer’s glue.

I then covered the board with white printer paper.  This step ended up being superfluous, but for some reason I thought it would be necessary, so here it is.

Now, Kim @ The Twice Remembered Cottage tore pages out of a dictionary for her board.  I don’t know if it is the book lover in me or something else, but I just could not bring myself to tear pages out of a dictionary.  Nor could I bring myself to buy one just for the sake of tearing pages out of it.  So, we have a great old dictionary here and we happened to have some old-looking parchment paper and a copier.  I opted to copy the letter pages out of the dictionary and then tear the edges to give that old, rustic look.  I then mod-podged the pages onto the white board.  I began by taking some of the text-only pages and doing a first layer, then I went over it in a methodical but messy looking way with the letter pages, making sure some of my favorite entry illustrations showed on the finished board.

Grace being cheesy as I make my board followed by a blurry shot of me at work taken by one of the girls. 

Now somewhere in the midst of all this we had the exciting experience of our smoke detector going off as my dear husband was serving us by making dinner (steak in the oven – I don’t recommend it).  This is the smoke detector linked to our alarm system.  The one that calls the fire department if you don’t answer the alarm company’s call.  The call that went to a phone number we no longer have (even though I had requested it be changed) and then to Matt’s phone that was dead and then to my parents and our house sitter and possibly Matt’s parents too, though I don’t recall hearing from them in the midst of all this.  So we got to visit with our neighborhood firemen.  Unfortunately (or fortunately) it wasn’t my brother’s crew and they insisted on coming in and checking things out.  Needless to say, I probably wasn’t as gracious and polite as I should have been and may have been a little jittery for the rest of the evening.

Nonetheless, I persevered and finished my board!

And now it hangs near my desk.  I attached the white board to the frame with hot glue and let it dry.  I used the Scrabble tiles from our personal game and a friend gave me an extra game that they had laying around.  I need to get one more set of Scrabble tiles, but it’s plenty of fun with two sets.  I bought a lot (as in a literal “lot”, not just “many”) of super-strong “earth” magnets on eBay.  This was my second significant expense, though I don’t recall just how much it ended up being, but it was less than the cost of the white board and I have magnets to spare.  I attached the magnets with a strong craft glue.

I am not a perfectionist by any stretch of the imagination.  There are some bubbles and imperfections in my board.  I should have taken more time applying the ModPodge to my dictionary pages, but I was too busy trying to calm down after our visit with the fire department.  That, and I’m not a perfectionist.  😉 The nice thing about having copied the dictionary pages is that if the bubbles ever bother me enough, I can easily recreate the board.  No one here seems to mind the imperfections and the board makes me smile pretty much every time I see it.

For His Glory ~

~ Sara