DIY Tile Crafts: How to Make Scrabble Ornaments and Scrabble Pictures

Things I learned this holiday season: People hang onto their Scrabble games and get rid of brand new, unopened Glee and Twilight games.

At least that's what I found to be true at multiple thrift stores in Sacramento.

When I decided to make Scrabble crafts for Christmas presents, I figured it would be easy to find an old Scrabble game at one of the many thrift stores I frequent. How wrong I was. I found lots of sad looking Scrabble Jr. games, but no actual Scrabble. In the end, I bought a new Scrabble game, paid for mainly with Shop Your Way points, so I still got a good deal.

For my first Christmas craft, I made my mom a decorative picture, turning the Scrabble tiles into crosses.

I used Super Glue to secure the letters into the cross shape. I immediately discovered that the glue bled onto front of the tiles, darkening parts of the light wood color. To remedy this, after gluing, I used a light peach nail polish to coat the tiles for a more uniform color.

For the picture, I searched free images and then did a little editing to make this particular sky image fit my vision. I printed it onto card stock.

Hot glue provided a quick way to affix the crosses to the card stock.

To fit the finished picture into the frame, I had to remove the glass. I could have purchased a shadow box instead of this frame from Kohl's, but I like that the letters pop from the sky and add dimension to the decor piece.

For my second DIY Scrabble project, I created 6 ornaments, working with the remaining letters from the Scrabble game. 

Again, I used Super Glue (in most cases) to seal the letters to one another. I did manage to glue my fingers to objects a few different times, but thanks to my bottle of acetone at hand, I was never stuck for long.

For the 2 NOEL and 1 LOVE ornaments, my husband sawed the tile racks in half. Then we sanded the edges before I painted each rack red.

To attach the hanging string, we drilled a hole in the back of each tile rack, right in the middle, near the top of the rack. Then we fed the string through the holes and tied it to create a loop.

I used ornament string from unused, second-hand ornaments leftover from my ugly Christmas sweater project.


I decorated some ornaments with white glitter atop a coat of clear nail polish.

For the other ornaments, I used blue glitter nail polish.

I made sure to wipe away the glitter from the black print on the tiles, so the letters and numbers would still be easy to read.

I also made two last name ornaments.

The BEDDES ornament was one of the simplest ornaments to make. I used a hefty dollop of glue to attach the hanging string on the back.

The MORRIS ornament was a bit of a challenge because the staggered tiles did not want to stay in place while the glue dried, but with patience, I eventually prevailed.

I attached a rod (from a new pair of shoes) to the back to strengthen the ornament. The rod also served as a way to attach the hanging string.

For my final ornament, I attached the word MERRY (decorated with blue dots from my nail polish bottle) to a sparkly snowflake ornament.

Because I had such a solid backing for this ornament, I was able to hot glue each tile straight onto the snowflake, one by one. This saved time and frustration.

With the Super Glue, I had to hold the tiles in place between my fingers while the glue dried.

After all of the ornaments were completed, I sprayed them with a clear Krylon sealant. The spray helped seal the white glitter to an extent, but not as well as I had hoped.


Materials and Cost: 

In total, I spent roughly $10 to complete all of the Scrabble crafts: That's 1 new Scrabble board game from Kmart, 1 new 8x10 frame from Kohl's and 1 new can of Krylon sealant spray from Walmart (of which I only used a small portion).

I also used: a saw, drill, red paint, foam paint brush, clear nail polish, white glitter, blue glitter nail polish, Super Glue, hot glue and ornament string, all of which I already had on hand.