Being Crafty

Last weekend I undertook a craft project I've been wanting to make for some time - a padded corkboard (the kind that has the ribbon criss-crossing over the front, and you just slide stuff behind the ribbons to keep them in place).

I went to JoAnn's and bought the materials:

• 18 x 24 corkboard (on sale)
• a small fleece remnant (super cheap...the pattern I had called for batting, but I didn't want to buy a bunch of batting that I'm never going to use. Using a fleece remnant seemed to be a good alternative.)
• one yard of fabric (also on sale)
• two spools of ribbon
  
• pushpins (you guessed it...on sale)

I later had to make a run to CVS to buy thumbtacks also, as I explain.

I cut the fleece remnant to size to fit just inside the frame of the corkboard, and using a couple of thumbtacks I had, tacked it into place. I then laid the corkboard down on its face on the fabric, and was going to pin/staple/attach the fabric to the back of the board. This is where things got tricky. The directions I had said to staple or use small finishing nails to nail the fabric into the wooden frame of the corkboard. I didn't have a staple gun, and the desktop stapler wasn't cuttin' it, so I tried using finishing nails. But the nails I had were too long, and if I tried to nail them in half-way and then bend them over, I was left with a messy, rough nail-head sticking out that I was afraid would scratch the wall. Plus, I realized that my "wood frame style corkboard" really meant "plastic frame painted to look like wood corkboard", and this made nailing into it difficult.

Then I had the idea of using thumbtacks...hence the run to CVS to buy thumbtacks. I scrapped the idea of attaching the fabric to the frame of the corkboard, and instead pinned it just inside the frame on the backside (into the cork). It was so easy, and it was easy to unpin and readjust the fabric or the ribbons I needed to. I pinned the ribbons in the same way, after measuring out how I wanted them to be spaced.

I'm really pleased with how it turned out. Here's a picture of the back:

It kind of looks like there are a bunch of M&M's sprinkled around it...those are the thumbtacks holding the fabric/ribbon in place.

The front:

With notes from my nephew and niece and a picture of the girl I sponsor through Compassion International.

A close-up of the front: