Making large/small professional tiles.

When you say feel, do you mean the paper texture or the weight? The weight is easy, that’s just a matter of getting the correct thickness of chipboard. Usually available in a wide range of thicknesses and sizes in art supply stores.

Paper can be tricky. The linen finish we have become accustomed to in eurogames is a special paper that until recently was only available in Europe. This isn’t to say that the paper is easy to find so I wouldn't focus on that so much.

Actually, I found the PERFECT material to make CHEAP, very professional looking tiles. My friend's dog got a hold of both my Settlers of Catan game AND my Penguin game ("Hey, That's my Fish").
using the method (4 steps) below, you can re-create any of those tiles, if they are destroyed, and also make your own tiles with this method.

Materials needed:
1) 1/16" posterboard - it needs to be this thickness to be viable for repeated play - you can usually find it at a craft or art supply store, and shouldn't run you more than $8 for a 36" x 48" sheet (which is 1,728 square inches - if you had that many 1" tiles in your game, it would certainly be ungainly, so that should be enough for about 8-10 projects at about 150 - 200 1" tiles apiece- that's approx. $1 per project, assuming there are no re-do's)

2) full-sheet labels - these usually come in glossy, packs of 10, and will be 8 1/2" x 11", so they should fit in and work for ALL US printers. they have NO perforations on them, and are (as they say) a FULL SHEET SINGLE STICKER. (this gives you 935 square inches - minus your printer margin - and usually runs about $10, so that's about 4-5 projects at about 150-200 1" tiles apiece, and another $2.50 per project).

3) a pair of scissors

If you can find another place to print (and cut) your tiles for $3.50 per game of 150-200 tiles, I welcome you to do it. Otherwise, read on...

3-step method:

1) In any desktop publishing program, graphic layout program, or even GOOD OLD MICROSOFT WORD, lay out your tiles on an 8.5"x11" page.

2) Print your tiles onto the full-sheet labels

3) Peel and stick the labels onto the 1/16" posterboard

4) cut out the labels using a normal pair of scissors

**NOTE: cutting them out is somewhat labor intensive, but step 4 is the reason you use 1/16" posterboard - it's not too much for any old pair of scissors you might have lying around.

Also, you might not want to cut more than one sheet at a time - though your scissors will probably be able to take it, your fingers might not - give yourself about a half-hour between sheets (maybe more).

Also, I can't tell MY Settlers of Catan replacement tiles from the real ones, because the real ones are VERY close to 1/16" thick.

I have gotten exemplary results using this method, and some of my friends have asked me where I bought the two games I have created using this method, simply because of how professional the tiles look.

Let me know if this works for you.

-stubert