Look What I Did: Magnetic Scrabble Board

My soror/sis/friend came to visit this past week. I'm so happy too. I was in dire need of some girl time. Things are changing in my life...and sometimes, that's when you need your good friends most. Well not only did we get a chance to discuss things that were going on in our lives, try new restaurants and sample some summer cocktails, we also chose one craft project to complete while she was here. That was an awesome idea. We should probably make it a tradition.

This year we decided to do magnetic scrabble board. Tine found it on pintrest, which I refuse to join, but stalk quietly when presented with any of it's fabulous tidbits. So, after both deciding that it was a cute idea, we decided to do that on her visit. The original post makes it seem simple enough, but it involves power tools and husbands and lots of cutting. We didn't have the husbands or power tools available, so we ended up improvising.

First things first...buy a very large lot of scrabble pieces. We got 544. Ebay helped. However, you can order them for a very reasonable price directly from Hasbro. They have the traditional pieces and the black and silver ones available if you're feeling fancy.

Then once our visit began we made a trip to what I now call "thrift store row." One of the bakk roads near my house literally has about 7 thrift stores all on the same street within a mile of each other. Some of them have some really great finds. We actually found suitable frames for the project at one of them. I chose a used cork board, which really turned out to be the best possible thing that could have happened. We also bought the best dictionary EVER (more on that later) at the same store. Made for a lot less cutting. Then we visited the hardware store. Originally, we were going to try the sheet metal. Too much cutting. Too many additional expenses. We opted for magnetic paint instead. We shared a can of that and a bottle of blakk spray paint.

When we finally made it bakk home to work, I started by spray painting the frame. Then painting the cork with the magnetic paint. Four coats made it extra metallic...I guess. We tested every coat with a strong neo disc magnet, which can also be found on ebay. I haven't purchased mine yet. Anywho, four worked for me. I followed it up by covering the entire thing with pages of that wonderful dictionary with Mod Podge (it was my first time). The dictionary was published by Webster and had lots of different sections. One for traditional use, a thesaurus, a secretaries guide, a medical dictionary, measurement conversions, more stuff and my fav part:

Slang from 1982. This was a hilarious read. 

My guests will obviously have just as much fun reading this as they do leaving messages on my board. Once I got all the pages down, it looked far too plain. My board is HUGE, so it really needed a little more pizzazz.  I immediately thought of nail head trim. I tried to do it with thumbtakks, but the lines were far too crooked. Bakk to the store! I actually spent a little more money and bought the trim from one of the teeny tiny upholstery stores. It was old...and had little rusty spots which matched perfectly with the book pages. I also bought some canvas to frame it out a little more. I'm some kind of genius. It came out fab!

This is after I added the canvas. I just used the thumbtakks to hold it in place. 

Then when all was said and done....

Mine! 

The cool thing about this is, it could have very well just ended up being a fancy cork board. And that would have cost much less. lol. I have another large cork board here, so I'm going to decorate that one too. Just the way I had originally intended.

Hers! 

This one is cool because she ended up using the existing mat to frame her board. It really had that "clean" look she likes so much. It looks like a piece of art and she could very well hang it without the pieces. 

I'm really happy with how it all turned out. I've already thought of a few different ways to do this. If I didn't already have one, I'd be open to doing it again. Oh well...new projects await!