For my birthday in March I received a beautiful book from my step sister and her family called the homemade home by Sania Pell. There were tons of great home DIY projects and easy to understand instructions. A week or two after I got home I was perusing a magazine that Tesco publishes and low and behold, they had adapted one of Sania’s projects for their magazine (except it was exactly the same and wasn’t adapted at all!). Holly over at decor8 wrote a really nice review and summary of the homemade home here.
I loved the look of the Linen Bulletin Board that Sania included in her book and decided to give it a go!
Materials and Equipment:
The cast of characters for this project
- Corkboard or other type of bulletin board (snagged mine for a few pounds at Ikea)
- Linen, for base fabric (again, snagged at Ikea for a pound)
- Long ruler, pencil and scissors
- Swatches of fabric for pockets (I used black felt)
- Pins, needles and thread
- Staple gun
- Strong ribbon or twill tape in different colours
- Clips
- Push pins
Now what? This is what you do:
- Lay the linen flat and place the board on top. Use a ruler and pencil to draw around the board, allowing an extra 10cm (4in) on all sides. Cut out. Place aside.
- Mark out pockets on fabric swatches and cut out. Turn under 5mm (1/4in) of fabric along the side and boom edges of pockets and iron flat. Fray the top edges. Decide where to put the pockets on the linen base fabric. Pin pockets to linen and sew by hand using a small running stitch.
- With fabric wrong side up, place board face down on top. Fold in corners and trim. Starting in the centre of one side, fold linen border to back of board and staple. At each corner, fold fabric over with the corner still folded in to create a mitre. Repeat on opposite side, pulling fabric taut. Fold in and staple the remaining two sides. Staple corners as well.
- Place a length of ribbon under the board, fold one end to the back and staple. Fold other end to the back, making sure it’s straight, pull tight and staple in place. Repeat for the other lengths of ribbons. I also ran a ribbon along the top for fun.
- Clip the clips (ha!) to the board and attach your keepsakes and memos. Stand the board on a shelf or worktop.
A little bit of extra Meagan character in there (or at least that is what B told me “it gives it character”) – crooked pockets (I forgot to pin the pockets down)!
In it’s home on the kitchen counter by our chalkboard baby feature wall!
Extras,
For some extra pizazz you can add in a few other things – you can spray paint the big clips you attach (I didn’t have any bulldog clips), you can glue scrabble pieces to the push pins or add buttons like I did.
