I've long professed my love for Pinterest. Quite frequently, I will see a craft idea that someone came up with, be inspired by it, and create something totally different with my own spin on it. It's really a great source of inspiration and ideas! In this particular case, I saw a "pin" using scrabble tiles to create some really cool coasters where the scrabble tiles had been used to create a series of alchohol related 4 letter words such as "beer" and "wine" (among others) and then glued into square "boards" and mod podged the final product to create the coasters. I loved the idea (and will probably attempt it as well!) but when I saw that pin, I immediately thought about creating a pseudo-scrabble board using a set of scrabble tiles and spelling out words that have meaning to me and the kids, starting with our names and spreading out from there, organically letting words come to mind based on the available letters left. I did a first draft on my own and liked the results but knew a second set of eyes would be beneficial so I had a friend come over and together we started over from scratch and came up with something even better than my original layout! Yeah for creative friends! :)
I then photographed our layout (my memory isn't what it used to be....) just in case my beloved kids or dogs happened to, you know, touch anything.... I then measured the layout, went to the local art store, bought a black stretched canvas board in just the right size, and diligantly super-glued the layout, tile by tile, onto the canvas. Finally, I hung it above the entryway to my kitchen. Admittedly, due to space constraints, I am running out of wallspace for all my ideas... and will soon have to direct my attention outdoors....
Here are two point and shoot snapshots taken late tonight (ergo: flash) just to show you all the end result. We used words that had significant personal meaning for me and kids and I tried to use one descriptive word off each kids "letters", for example Gavin has the french word "lire" which means To Read (which absolutely captures the essence of what he loves to do more than anything in the world) and Ellie has the word "artist" which comes off her name, because that's exactly how I would describe her to someone who didn't know her.
Other words we came up with: Family, Love, Life, Always, Maison (french for house), Kooper (of course!), Joie (french for Joy), Laughter, Music (very important in this house), Create, Story (everyone has a story), Dream, Tenacious (my tenacity has helped me through many difficult times), Bloom (as in "bloom where you're planted"), and last but not least, Grateful. I used every tile in the set. And there's about a half dozen letters that I "created" with a black sharpie on the backside of a letter I didn't/couldn't use, so I guess that's cheating a little but, hey, my craft, my rules! :)
This was a super easy, fun, cheap craft and very personalized. The best part was definitely coming up with the layout and if you're a fan of scrabble you'll likely be all over this like white on rice.
Happy creating!
