Patriotic Tic Tac Toe

Use rocks and dimensional fabric paint for this fun and easy patriotic tic tac toe game! Makes a great decoration that can also be played with.

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The 4th of July is one of my favorite holidays! I love celebrating our country’s independence with food, fun, fireworks and all things red, white and blue. This little patriotic tic tac toe board is so easy to put together and it will be one decoration you won’t mind letting your kids play with! (If your kids are a little older, you could turn this into a craft for them to do.)

Supplies needed to make Patriotic tic tac toe

• small rocks (1.5″-2″)
• red, white and blue fabric paint with fine tip applicator (I used the Tulip dimensional fabric paint)
• square wooden base (I used an 8″x8″ box frame)
• wood stain or paint (optional) (I used Varathane wood stain in Early American)
• permanent vinyl

How to make your patriotic tic tac toe rocks and game base

First, gather 9-10 rocks. Wash them and make sure they will fit on your base.

Once they are dry, you are ready to paint. I used the Tulip dimensional fabric paint because it comes with a built in applicator that makes it easy to apply. I grabbed the sparkle paint for the red and blue and matte for the white.

For 4 of the rocks, I painted them with red and white alternating stripes.

For the other 5 rocks, I painted two blue lines and then made four rows of dots to represent the stars, then I finished with two more blue lines.

*PRO TIP* Practice your lines on an extra rock in order to get a feel for how hard you need to squeeze the bottle.

The instructions say to let the paint dry for 4 hours before handling. You don’t want your paint to get smudged!

While the paint is drying, get your stain (or paint) and stain/paint your wooden base. (If you are new to staining wood, check out my post about how to stain wood for all the tips and tricks.)

Once your base is dry, you can apply the lines to make it into a tic tac toe board. Just take the length of the base and divide by 3. Make a mark with a pen or pencil at the very edge and repeat on all sides. Draw a line to connect the opposite sides. Apply thin vinyl strips to the board. I used permanent white vinyl cut into 1/4″ wide strips. Then cut off the excess using scissors or a pen knife.

And now your patriotic tic tac toe game is ready to be played! You can keep it out as a decoration or give it to your kids to play with.