"Mini" Idea Board

So today's craft was one out necessity...okay more like want ;-)

I am constantly looking for new ideas on the computer. When I find an idea I love I usually go to the top of the page and bookmark it. This has resulted in a TON of pages being bookmarked.

The other day my hubby was looking through the bookmarks trying to find a page he had found earlier. Needless to say he had a difficult time finding it due to the fact that there were too many to look through. He then "kindly" asked me to stop bookmarking SO many pages. So I went through and wrote down the concept of a few in a note book and deleted a bunch of book marks.

So I now have my "idea notebook" but I also wanted something pretty that I could tack ideas and sources I have found to (hopefully this will help me get my bookmarks down to just a few).

I found a post for an "Idea Board" a while back...and of course bookmarked it. While purging my bookmarks the original source for the idea board was lost :-( so sadly I don't have the original source that this craft came from today.

So instead I am going to give you a little tutorial on how I made my "mini idea board"

Thankfully I had most of my supplies on hand...but here is what you will need:

Round cork board -sold in a pack of 6- can be found at Hobby Lobby
Fabric
Pen
Ribbon
Modge Podge
Paint Brush
Hot Glue Gun & additional glue sticks
Push Pins

1). Here is what the round cork boards look like that you will want to get...



2). Next you will want to lay your cork board on your fabric and trace...leaving about 1 1/2" around the edges (that way you have enough to wrap around to the back)

I cut out three different patterns to make it a little brighter...but you could use the same fabric on all six for a more unified look.


3). Next put a nice thick coat of Modge Podge on the cork boar.


4). Place your fabric wrong side down on the cork board and put another coat of modge podge on top of the fabric.


5). Next get out your handy dandy hot glue gun...
(I had originally used Modge Podge for this part but it was way too messy and didn't stick that well so I switched to hot glue- much easier)

Put a thin strip of hot glue around the edges, fold your fabric over onto the hot glue.


6). Once all of the backs are secure keep the cork boards laying face down.
Lay them all out like so....


put a nice thick layer of hot glue where each of the boards come together


let dry completely.

7). Flip the board over and put an additional thick layer of hot glue on the front where the boards meet.

Now it may look a little messy right now...but we will fix that.

8). Once the hot glue has dried completely, grab your ribbon. I used hot pink for mine (there are all boys in this house there is not enough pink in my life!).

Around each of the edges where you have a big ugly glob of hot glue...cut out a strip of ribbon, place it over the glob and secure it on the back with some more wonderful hot glue (sorry no pic for this step) Hopefully you are a skilled hot glue expert and can avoid burning yourself a dozen times...like I did :-(

Now those ugly globs should be hidden :-)

9). Next I decided that the board still looked pretty blah...so I added some more ribbon to my two cork boards that were plain.

I cut out four pieces of ribbon and measured them so they would be long enough to fit around the board and reach to the back.

I laid them on the board one by one in a "basket weave" kind of pattern and hot glued them to the back to secure them.

10). Next I chose some pretty lavender ribbon (since I ran out of hot pink) , and secured it to the top with hot glue so I would have something to hang the board with.

11). Lastly hang it up, add a few push pins and start filling it with your brilliant ideas!!!!


The board measures about 7" wide x 12" long...definitely a mini board....it is great though for people like me who only have a small space beside their computer, or sewing desk!!!

Things I would do differently next time:

-the cork board is pretty thin...so if I was going to do this project over again I probably would have bought two packages and hot glued them together so it would double the thickness.

-use just hot glue instead of Modge Podge...the Modge Podge seemed to change the color of the fabric. (although I am not sure if the hot glue would look clumpy?)