Fun with Anagrams: Supersized Letter Tiles

Vintage Anagram tiles are just plain fun to play with. Although I’ve never actually played the game of Anagrams, I’ve certainly enjoyed my share of fun spelling things out with the alphabet tiles. I have the word INSPIRATION spread out along the top of my inspiration (bulletin) board. And I keep my blog name in an old game piece tray along my studio shelf with The Head of The Class vintage game figures looking on from behind.
Vintage Anagram letter tiles, popular for use in soldered jewelry projects, are not hard to find, but they can be fairly pricey, which is why patience is key! I’ve never paid more than $10 for a full set. Keep an eye on eBay, Etsy and flea markets, less expensive sets will turn up. There are several versions of the sets, including red wood tiles and cardboard. But my favorites are the black and yellow.I keep my tiles organized alphabetically in an old, small compartmental parts cabinet for finding the exact letters needed at any time.
I placed a grouping of Anagram alphabet tiles on my scanner and made an alphabet to share. To access, simply click on the image. It’s a pretty big file that will accomodate enlarging the individual tiles up to a little more than 3.5″, perfect for the project I’m sharing today! I like to have multiples of the most common letters available in case I use more than one when spelling something out. It looks more realistic when same letters don’t match, especially in double-letter words like my son’s name, BENNETT. I’ve also included two different back-side tile versions, great for word spacers.
ANAGRAMS SUPERSIZED!
Disclaimer: Ink sucker project! Keep that in mind when deciding how many large tiles you will want to print out.
Find or make a shallow square boxes as bases for your tiles. I had some generic 3.5″ square cardboard jewelry boxes in my stash, the bottom sections of the boxes work great.
Crop out individual letters digitally and size to fit your box, adding flaps on each side in corresponding black. Make two opposite side flaps just a bit wider than the others for overlapping at corners when wrapping your box.Of course, you can always just print out the square alphabet pieces and adhere to a black box, that would work well, too. But if printing with flaps, once printed trim out the shape around the tile, cutting in just a bit towards the corners of the tile image on your longer flaps.
You can print to large label stock, or to plain paper and spray with spray adhesive. I have no doubt Mod Podge would do the trick as well.Center your box upside down onto your adhesive covered paper and smooth the paper over your box with the long sides folding in first to cover the corners.
Color the white edges of the other side flaps with a black Sharpie to make the seams invisible.
Fold over the remaining flaps to finish. These large tiles made from lightweight cardboard boxes will easily hang with just a bit of poster-tack putty.
You can also trim out the letters digitally and have fun making words to use on your blog, or cover boring Scrabble tiles to create dimensional scrapbook pieces for spelling out names.I’m not certain the exact amount of tiles per letter in an actual Anagrams game that are required to play, but If you want to wing it and print your own game tile images, stick to cardboard and trim out individually, I’m including a scan of the instructions.