Scrabble Tile Wall Art

I guess I've been in the mood to fill up our blank walls lately, because it seems I've been blogging about DIY art A LOT.  Hopefully, you guys are enjoying these inexpensive art projects and aren't getting too bored with all the art posts.  I promise that I have other projects coming soon.  I have a couple of pieces of furniture that need some sprucing up, but the temperatures here have been too cold to motivate me to work in the carport.  I'm going to need at least 60 degrees for that.  Where is Spring???  Seth and I have also finally (I believe) nailed down the living room layout.  My mom was here for a visit and we brainstormed about all the possible options for television and furniture placement.  Now, we are working on purchasing a few new pieces and DIYing some others.  Should be some exciting stuff.  I'll share as we check things off the list.

For today, I'm going to show you an art project for our entryway that I recently completed.  

I enjoy playing Scrabble and Words with Friends and I was inspired by Scrabble tile art that I've come across on Pinterest and other blogs.  Check out Jen and Tim's space (below) that was featured on Apartment Therapy.

I like it a lot but it bugs me that the letters don't spell anything.  Does that bother anyone else?  Apparently, I'm not as much of a whimsical, free-spirit when it comes to things like this.  

Here is another inspiration photo with tutorial.  I love that the wood grain is enhanced due to the way she cut her tiles.  

Supplies you'll need:

• wood (I used two 1x8x12s)
• a saw
• wood stain
• a computer with a printer or a silhouette machine (I had to do this the old fashioned way)
• acrylic paint & small brush

Seth cut my boards into 11 tiles for me.  They are roughly 7.75" square.  Then he gave them a quick once over with the sander.  I wiped them down and then stained them with Rustoleum Paprika wood stain.  Then I decided that they were too dark and too orange.  So I contemplated my options:  1)  Sand them all down and start over, 2) Stain them darker to match our other dark wood pieces and paint the letters white instead of black (kind of the reverse or "negative" of a regular scrabble tile).  I decided to go with option 2 because it would be less work and I thought that the dark stain would create more contrast with the light gray wall.  So they aren't super traditional looking scrabble tiles, but definitely still recognizable.  And now they have a unique twist.

I knew that I wanted my scrabble art to hang just inside our front door so I decided to use the words "welcome" and "hello" for mine.  I found the closest font I could for the letters (News Gothic MT) and the closest for the numbers (Arial Narrow) and tweaked them in Word until the letter/number set looked like a scrabble tile (I had to play with how far apart they were, etc).  I printed them off and then used a simple pencil transfer method (like I did for my lobster art in the hallway) to get a faint outline on my stained tiles. I then filled in the outline with a steady hand, patience, a small brush, and white acrylic paint.

The letters aren't perfect, but I think that adds to the homemade feel of it.  We bought some sawtooth picture hangers (like this) and attached them to the back of each tile for hanging.  I love the new Command picture hanging strips, but these pieces of wood were heavy and I was too chicken to use them for this project.  

And in a few weeks, our trim should be all white!  I cannot wait.

I'm excited that another blank wall is now sporting some DIY art.  Yeah, I said sporting. Onto the next project.