Monday, September 20, 2010

Corkboard: From Drab to Fab

So by now you know that I'm pulling more color into my house color scheme.  I did this simple project over the weekend that made a huge difference in my house!  I had a regular cork board...



and I knew there was something I could do to spruce it up!

So I added some baseboard, paint, fabric flowers, a little ribbon and voila:



Bet you didn't even recognize it!

How do you make your own?



1. Use some acrylic paint and paint the cork board surface.  I used the Linen color of FolkArt paint.  It took about 1 ½ bottles to cover the surface.



2. Buy, measure, and cut baseboard at 45 degree angles to make a nice frame.  Most custom frames will cost you hundreds of dollars...mine cost $9!  Paint it the color you'd like.  Adhere the frame to the cork frame.  (I did this new frame because the teeny tiny cork board frame was just out of scale to me and I wanted something a little more beefy!  This is the before and after paint pictures.  Please excuse the cat, this picture was the one with the least amount of cat...)



3. Cut out various sized circles out of satin fabric and melt the edges over a candle.  (Don't forget to wear your sunglasses, otherwise you'll damage your eyes staring at an open flame for that long.)  Layer a few different sized circles and hand stitch together, adding some beads as you go.  Make leaves with green ribbon.



4. Adhere ribbon to cork board, right inside the frame.  Layout and adhere your poppy flowers.  Hang up!



After I hung it up it looked so good I didn't want to clutter it with all my normal bulletin board stuff so I made a little shopping list that coordinated with it instead!

Want your own shopping list?  You can download it here

There are 2 per page so I printed about 5 (so I'd have 10 pages) then trimmed them on the gray lines,



added some patterned paper to the chipboard back which is slightly larger than the list,



punched holes near the top and held it together with brads,



and put that on my board!  If you don't have chipboard, try an old cereal box instead!  Only thing I have left to do is customize some push pins, which I'll show you how to do soon!

Have a great Monday everyone!

2 comments:

celia said...

Erin, it turned out so nicely! I totally need to do that to mine now. Did you have the store cut the molding or did you do it with a hand saw?

erin said...

Thanks Celia! I used a hand saw to cut the pieces. I cut one long side and one short side, then made the other two match exactly on length so that the final frame was a precise fit.