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!

Elephant Man Hat and Cowl

Sometimes, when you are a maker of things, you get asked to make the weirdest stuff at the strangest times. I wasn't planning on blogging today, but when I woke up to my sister's calling and asking me to make her an Elephant Man hat and cowl for a play she and her husband are directing. . .I realized I would be blogging today after all. . .Yes, Sister, you let me stay at your house for a year rent-free. . .I guess I can make you an Elephant Man hat. . .

This is the original one that is in some museum somewhere. Until this morning, I had no idea what it even was! I mean, I knew he wore a thing over his face, but I didn't know there was a specific hat. Learn something new every day. . .

Here is another view:

Here is mine:

I went to Goodwill, but I couldn't find any brown velvet, so I bought a pair of brown tweed pants. I used a pillow case for the cowl.

I used the lining of the pants as the lining in the hat.

If you look at the original again, you will see it has some kind of ribbon around the bottom half. Well, obviously, I didn't have that either, so I just sewed around and around the bottom half with white thread. I think it gives it a rustic feel and it at least alludes to the orginal.

If you look closely, you can see that I put a bit of thread down the middle of the eye hole. Having done theatre myself, I know how much an actor needs to see on stage, so I cut the eye hole bigger than the original. To keep the hole from gaping open, I tied a bit of thread down the middle of it.

A close up of the eye hole.

The End.