Scrabble Magnet Message Board

I was inspired by Twice Remembered Cottage's Magnet Board which I first saw on Pinterest. We love to play Scrabble around here well let me say I love to play scrabble. 

It is hard to get others to play with me and super hard to play last few years with my barely three year old around who likes to upset the game when we are well into it. 

I thought this board would be perfect to hang on the wall where DS age 3 could not reach it and where we could have a perpetual game going all the time. I ended up having to limit each person to one word a day. 

I put a twist on mine by decoupaging a scanned scrabble board to the front so we could play an ongoing game. 

First I purchased the Sheet Metal from Lowe's. It was about $12. Online it says it is $8.94. But at our Lowe's I know it was more than that.  

And we just got door frame molding and little corner wood rosettes so we did not have to do miter cuts. We have a miter saw and can certainly do miter cuts but this was easier and cleaner edges. The molding was already primed white. 

First we glued with Liquid Nails the metal to a piece of Masonite we already had. Personally next time I would use 1/2" plywood because it warped a little. 

  after putting the glue on my DH put a bunch of heavy objects from the garage on top of it and let it dry overnight. 

Next I selected pages from a 1920's Dictionary I just knew I was saving for a great project!!!

 Then I Decoupaged them to the sheet metal. 

  Okay note here I am not the best decoupager (is that a word?)

I always have bumps and bubbles this process took forever to get the worst of the bubbles out. I especially have this problem when I decoupage with antique papers. They have a tendency to absorb the glue and tear super easy and then ripple as they dry. It is really difficult. Most of the time when I use actual vintage papers I coat them with decoupage and let them dry because then the tend to tear less. However these were super thin pages and I did not want to wait. So I spent what seemed to be hours smoothing re-smoothing carefully without tearing. And it still was a little bumpy and had a few bubbles. My remedy for that is several coats of varnish. It just added charm to it. You can tell it is real vintage paper. 

You can see in the Dictionary picture above that I painted the trim molding with black acrylic craft paint. then I distressed a little with sandpaper to let a little of the white show though. Then I varnished it with the same sparkly varnish I will tell you about below. So this molding was liquid nails glued onto the board and clamped overnight. 

Then came the hardest part to get the Scrabble board on the board so the Magnets would still stick. 

My scanner is legal size so I had to scan and rescan I even cut a board up and scanned it to get rid of any shadow and distortion. I did Photoshop the images a little cuz my 1945 board was more grey than I liked.  I then cut scanned images up and pieced them back together like a puzzle. 

Now the dictionary pages had a good 2 coats of decoupage and varnish on them you can see the shine in the picture. So I was able to put the board on and if I didn't like it after it before it dried completely I could peel it of and start over. I did this a few times till I got it how I wanted it. 

You really cannot see the seams on the finished board. A little Tim Holtz antiquing stamp rubbed on it and coats and coats of varnish and it is all great. 

Below is the Sparkle Varnish from Micheal's I love this stuff. I am not sure the camera does it justice. It is subtle. I use it on everything. It does not give a great shinny protective coat so I usually use Minwax acyclic gloss coat over it. 

Well that is it here's the finished board.

Right now it is just leaned against the wall and propped up on top of my decoupaged desk, sometime I may just screw it directly to the wall. 

Well hope this helped you if you want to make your own. Feel free to comment or question. 

Also I will share my scans for you if you want to make one. 

so check back. 
  a few tricks... I sprayed the scanned image with an art fixative before decoupaging it. Helped it from smearing when I was smoothing the bubbles out. Still had issues with the pink bleeding. Clear spray varnish (cheap stuff) worked better. 

When gluing the Earth Magnets on the "craft" super glue was a little runny it worked but the magnets are super strong and hard to work with if the tiles were close together they would "jump" together or drift to the corners of the tiles. I preferred the Gel glue. 

I got the earth magnets from eBay. I ended up getting the 1/4" x 1/16" rare earth magnets.

Here are the first set of scrabble board scans...
Page 1
 Page 2 
Page 3
Page 4

Happy Crafting and Decorating

Love,

Lisa