Game Board Shadow Box

I love craft time!! I have pinned many, many crafts on my Pinterest page! My friend Emily and I love to get together to do crafts and I think that a craft activity can be an excellent way to spend time together and save a little money if you plan ahead, use coupons, and do a craft project that is useful for you!! Also, when you are getting together to do crafts not everyone has to do the same thing! It is fun to see what everyone else comes up with and maybe it will give you inspiration for a future project!!

My dad is so difficult to shop for! I never know what to get him for birthdays, Father's Day or Christmas  (or any other gift giving occasion!)!! This year for Christmas I decided I was going to make his present and this is what I came up with!

My dad LOVES word games!! Boggle is probably his favorite word game but he definitely enjoys scrabble.  

I had two sources of inspiration for this project:
1. Pinterest (because everything I know these days seems to come from Pinterest!) has several projects that use scrabble tiles but nothing really appropriate for my dad, he doesn't really need coasters, he definitely doesn't need any scrabble jewelry and ornaments aren't really his thing!!
2. All of the pictures in my Dad's office are at least 8 years old!! Time for an update!!

I don't have pictures of the various steps (not that you really need them) because I didn't know I was going to make a blog when I was creating the project.  But I don't really think this project could be any easier!  I also think that if you have another board game that has special meaning to you, you can create a similar project with that game!! You just need to use a little creativity!! :)

Supplies:
1. Glue gun
2. Double stick tape
3. Pictures
4. Scrabble board and tiles (we had multiple Scrabble games around the house so I used one of the extras)
5. Wooden squares-the number needed depends on what you want them to spell out (I just used the ones you can get for about 25 cents at craft stores)
6. Permanent marker
7. Shadow box
8. Black card stock
9. Pictures

Step 1:
Gather the pictures that you want to add to the shadow box.  I didn't choose too many because I wanted to keep it a little more simple and feature the scrabble board and tiles along with the picture!

Step 2:
I attached the black card stock to the paper that came in my shadow box (if you don't want to use card stock you could get a black poster board).  The black just created a nice background for everything else and the card stock combined with the paper created a nice weight background for the project!

Step 3:
Just saying, I took the lazy way out, there are much neater ways to write the letters on the wooden squares.  I freehanded the letters with pencil on the squares and filled the letters in with permanent marker.  If you want a neater way of doing the letters you can find out how on Pinterest!

Step 4:
I laid out the game board and wooden squares where I wanted them on the board.  Once everything was in place I used a glue gun to attach the board and the squares to the background.

Step 5:
I chose the words I wanted to spell out on the board and arranged the tiles in the center of the board.  When I was choosing which words I wanted to use I kept in mind how they would fit together on the board.  Just a reminder (because I messed up on this) make sure your letter is right side up when you are gluing it down!  Of course, if you mess up it is hot glue so it should peel up pretty easily! It may take some of the paper off of the board game but hopefully you are putting the tile right back where you pulled it up from! Otherwise just put a picture over it! ;)

Step 6:
Put the pictures on the board! I used double stick tape for the pictures hoping that it would make it easy to change the pictures! When my Dad unwrapped the present one of the pictures had come loose so I had to apply more tape but it seems to be doing well now!