The Importance of Note "Tacking"

Hi everybody.  Well, I am back to work and trying to get back into the swing of things.  Part of me is happy and part of me hates to drag myself out of bed so early in the morning!  Left to my own devices, I lazed around the house plenty this Summer, enjoying the air conditioning and all so it is good to get some structure back in my life.  Besides that, I do enjoy the little people I get to work with. 

I wanted to share with you a couple of bulletin board projects completed recently.  The kitchen board pictured above was a tag team project my husband and I made together.  I like bulletin boards in just about every room because I am forever tacking something up, whether it is a picture, a grocery list, a recipe or a momento.  My new kitchen didn't have any wall space left so I improvised.  I bought these small cork squares at JoAnn Fabrics for four dollars.

I decided three stacked on top of each other would fit on the side of my upper cabinets.  So I asked my husband to cut a piece of board the size of three of them so I could glue them on. 

You could use whatever you have on hand like plywood or mdf board but we used a scrap of beadboard.  I glued them on with a good tacky glue.  When the glue dried, I selected a fabric to be the background of my bulletin board and tacked in place nice and tight so I could secure it in the back, wrapping it like a package and using a combo of hot glue and tacky glue. 

At this point, I passed it off to my husband and I am sorry but I have no pictures of the magic he performed. He made a frame and stained it to match our cupboards.  You could get real creative here and make the frame primitive and give it a whitewash or put whatever finish you wanted on it.  The sky is the limit with fabrics and frames.  Then I just used a staple gun to staple ribbon on the back at the top and tied a pretty bow with the wire ribbon to hang it.  You could put sawtooth hangers on the back and skip the ribbon.  You could even use a purchased picture frame and ditch the glass, replacing it with a small corkboard. 

This corkboard was even simpler.  I used an existing purchased corkboard and just put fabric on it to match my craft room.  I used a tool to wedge it under the frame. 

The tool shown here happened to be in the Fiskars multi tool I have.  Anyway, it is slightly time consuming and your hand hurts a little after, but I thnk it is worth it.  I didn't use any glue because I may want to repurpose it and change the fabric.  I know this seems simple but think of where you could use a bulletin board and how cool it would be to have it look like it is part of the decorating.  When my boys were litle, I purchased very simple quilted plain comforters for their rooms because every couple of years, I would take them to the fabric store and let them pick out fabric for curtains and pillow shams.  Through the years there were planets and cars and trucks and dinosaurs and I always bought a little extra fabric to do their bulletin boards over.    It always looked so custom. 

By the way, you can't have a custom bulletin board with ordinary push pins.  I buy plain push pins and find cool buttons that match my room theme and use E6000 to epoxy them together.  I usually have to clip the shank off the buttons but it is super easy and so cute.  I have veggie push pins on my kitchen board and found these sewing themed buttons for my craft room. Aren't they cute? 


I also wanted to ask if there is anyone out there who is as big a fan as I am of the Pioneer Woman.  I love her blog and her cooking show on Food Network.  I have tried so many of her recipes and they are all delish.  I made her chicken spaghetti this past week and it was a huge hit.  I made it into two dishes so I froze one of them.  Now I have a yummy casserole to pull out when I know time is short. 

I hope everyone has a great week.  Let me know if you try one of my bulletin board ideas.  I would love to hear about it.  Take care.     Nancy