Make Your Own Ribbon Bulletin Board

This post is nothing new, but maybe it will still give you an idea.

I get three fashion magazines that come to my house. I guess I'm old school and like to see trends and fashion ideas in actual print vs. having a Pinterest board (which. . .yes. . .I have some of those too). Anyways, I used to clip out my favorite ideas and keep them in a 3-ring notebook. Well. . .the main problem with that is that I never look at it! It stays tucked away on its shelf out of sight. That doesn't really help me. I realized that I need something more immediate. I needed a bulletin board.

Before I even started pricing cork boards and push pins, I realized that I had all the materials to make a ribbon bulletin board. Why go out and buy something that I could just make? That's what this post is going to show you: How to make your own ribbon bulletin board.

First of all, I had this old canvas frame that wasn't being used. You don't have to have one covered in canvas. (But let's face it. If you are female and have friends, chances are you have been to one of those group painting classes and you probably have an outcome of that event at home right now that you HATE, so. . .why not repurpose it?) :) It just needs to be made of wood so you can push staples into it--you could probably also use a decent piece of cardboard. I also grabbed a piece of shiny pink table cloth to cover it, but you can use any fabric. (You may remember that I used this same fabric to make a sewing machine cover.)

I laid the fabric down and cut around it leaving about two to three inches around. That would give me just enough to fold up around the frame.

Then I spayed some adhesive to the back of the fabric. You don't have to do this part, but it helps to keep the fabric from slipping as you attach it to the frame.

Then I folded up the edges of the fabric around the frame.

Okay, I would advise you if you do this to use a staple gun or AT LEAST a normal sized stapler. All we have in our house is this tiny Swingline stapler, and. . .it took a while because about only one in five staples actually took!

This is after all the fabric had been stapled up around the frame.

Next I took some ribbon and diagonally stretched it across the frame. I stapled either end to the frame.

After stapling the ribbon to the sides, I pulled and stapled the tail parts around to the back.

And that's basically it. You just keep adding ribbon in rows until you are satisfied with how it looks.

Be sure to go back the other direction.

Almost finished. I'm pretty proud of how good it looks as I didn't measure distances or anything. Not bad for eyeballing and using an almost worthless stapler!

This is the back. You can see I stapled all the ribbon tails to the back.

The last step was to add buttons to each intersection of ribbon. This just keeps the pictures in place that you tuck into the ribbon.

All done!

Well. . .almost.

Now it's on the wall, and I can easily see inspiring ideas. 

(Right now I'm into collars.)

My plan is that once this is filled up, I can take a picture of it and put that into an archive of sorts, take these down, and start a new board. I plan on doing this twice a year or so. Anyways, we'll see. For now, I like being able to see my ideas easily!

And then the obligatory social media question:

What do you/will you use your bulletin board for?

The End!

The Sell-Out #1: Butterick 5890 - The Alice in Wonderland Smock Bubble Dress

I am no fan of store-bought patterns. I haven't used them in over a decade. I like to make my own. However, the other day I was at a thrift store and came across several boxes of vintage patterns. As they were $.30 apiece, I thought playing with them might be fun. Most of them were of hideous 90s dresses, but a few were kind of interesting. This was one of them. I was particularly interested in the pointed yoke and the pleated front. Also, I wanted to see how they'd patterned the pockets. 

Since, I used a pre-made pattern for this one, I called it a "sell-out." However, you know I can't follow directions, right? In fact, I looked over the directions and followed about half of them. That is the exact reason I hate store-bought patterns. They take you through all these unnecessary and confusing steps when all you have to do is think of the next logical step. For instance, they wanted me to add a zipper. Why in the world would I need to add a zipper to a dress that I'm practically swimming in?

I'm not really a good body type for this kind of dress as I don't really have shoulders, so I decided to add sleeves. This is what happened. Ick:

It looks like a feed-sack--exactly the look I was NOT going for. This was also the smallest size available on the pattern. After making it, I realized the pattern packet read, "Maternity" on the front. Oops. No wonder.

So, then I remembered I had a really comfortable, cute H&M smock dress hanging in my closet. I got it out and studied it.

My fixes were to take in the sides about two inches, peg the sleeves so they didn't stick out like a weird Sci-Fi costume, and hem the dress to just above the knee.

The brown and blue diamond fabric is left over curtain material from my sister's house. The blue skirt material is, I think, from hospital sheets.

Details, details:

Oh, so proud of the symmetry. Notice it around the neckline, the point, the shoulders, even the sleeves, please.

This small peg makes a big difference.

Fearful symmetry. (That is where the unnecessary zipper was supposed to go. Maybe next time, I will just put the fabric on the fold and skip this seam entirely.)

Deep side pockets. Mmmm comfort!

The End!...Just kidding, it's not.

So after posting this, I was trying the dress on, and you know what? I didn't love it. It wasn't different enough for me. I dunno, it was too poofy or something around the bottom. So I tapered the bottom hem in a little bit on both sides at an angle. Here I pulled the sides way out to exaggerate what I did. (The dress won't hang this way.)

I just think the tapering on the bottom helps to balance the architecture on the top.

Yeah, this is way more "me". . .More Asian-y looking.

The REAL End!