a couple of years ago i made my nephew a pretty swell set of wooden memory tiles using different animals i had designed (i should maybe post about those...). i came across them a few weeks ago and thought, i should make margot something like that. before my brain could come up a with a new design idea though, i came across these amazing monster alphabet tiles designed by the swell folks at the caravan shoppe. perfection.
i used the pages sized for 2.25 by 1.5 inch tiles (which are the perfect size for margot) and had them printed on card stock at office max, as recommended in the file. i'm super glad i did this too, as it's much better quality and saved me from endless warring with our worthless color printer (we are not friends). and since i am extremely fortunate to have a fab lab in my neighborhood, i just laser cut the wooden rectangles out of a quarter inch sheet of oak plywood. i put the polka dotted backing paper on the sheet of wood before cutting out the tiles. i count this as a stroke of genius, since applying the monsters took much cutting and gluing and almost cost me my sanity. i think it was worth it though. sanity is overrated.
margot is only somewhat impressed by them. so far her favorite thing to do is wait until i have them neatly lain out on the coffee table and then flail her arms, slinging them to the far reaches of the living room. i must admit, i does make quite a nice ruckus. she also thinks they're pretty tasty.
i had a couple of issues with the file, but they probably aren't issues that a sane person would have. for one, the pictures of the finished product on the website show a nice white background. when you buy the pdf though, what you get is the peach color shown in the digital rendering. i wasn't a big fan of the color, so i brightened the background before printing. also, the size tile i used only had images for a 'scrabble alphabet'. so tiles that only appear once in scrabble--j, k, q, x and z--only had the uppercase letter. since i wanted to make a full uppercase and lowercase set, i had to photoshop the missing letters from the other tile sizes. not a huge deal, but i did forget the lowercase z, which makes me pretty sad.
minor issues really. i totally recommend these monster letters. they're a nice way to get professional design quality while still having that sense of diy accomplishment. seriously, who can resist that little j? too cute. now i'm eyeing their olliblocks zoo printable. i see the most adorable fridge magnets ever in my future (says the crazy lady who still has an uppercase set of letters to finish).
on a completely unrelated note (or maybe as a logical followup to the previous crazy lady comment), all of these close up of our coffee table are giving me an itch the refinish it. i've had this coffee table since high school. my dad bought it for me for four dollars at a yard sale (yeah, i was the kid in high school who thought a coffee table was a great present). i think it's time to give it some love. orange much? oy.
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