This was my attempt to make a gift for someone adorable using only stuff that I had lying around the house. Since I had exactly 98 spare wooden tiles, I came up with: alphabet fridge magnets.
What I used:
- Magnetic sheets (in the form of spammy marketing magnets I get in the mail sometimes)
- Wall paint
- Acrylic paint pens
- Clear coat spray paint
- Craft glue
- Exactly 98 1cm square wooden tiles
I had liquid nails lying on the kitchen bench when I came up with this idea, so I first tried sticking the wooden tiles onto the magnets using that. After drying, they started to pop apart as I was cutting the magnets. I glued them a second time, but this time I pulled the shiny layer off the magnets first to expose the papery layer, then used craft glue to stick the tiles down. To be honest, it probably still wasn’t the right glue. I should really have done some tests before gluing everything, but I was busy embracing the chaos.
After gluing, time to paint! I picked a few colours from my paint sample collection, and matched them with some similarly hued acrylic paint pens. Mixing the wall paints with white made them more pastel and cute. I painted a couple of test tiles to check that the letters would stand out enough (and that my handwriting was legible).
I think doing black tiles with pastel letters would have looked the most striking, but I couldn’t figure out how to write the letters as negatives, as you can see from my letter “B” above. Truly atrocious.
Each tile got 2 coats of paint for the background colour, then lettered using paint pens. The edges looked really messy though, so I went around those with a black paint pen (also 2 coats). Once everything was dry, I gave it a clear coat with spray paint. I didn’t take any pictures of that bit, because I forgot.
