Cork Board Beautification

Cork boards are boring looking so I decided to spruce one up for office/craft/design/fun room. And while I was at it, I figured why not a white board as well? I started with the white board (sometimes known as a dry erase board too) first. The one that I bought is neat in that it has a cork strip around the border so I decided to cover it in ribbon.

White Board - before

I had to make sure that my ribbon was wide enough so that I could glue it to the wood on either side of the cork strip in order for the cork strip to be functional.

I warmed up my hot glue gun and cut the pieces of ribbon for each side of the board. After a bit of trial-and-error, I found that the best way to apply the glue and ribbon was to start in the middle of the board and apply the hot glue in small sections and immediately place the ribbon over it. * The reason I found starting in the middle rather than on the end was that I had more control of keeping the ribbon in a straight line * Remember that hot glue is HOT and dries FAST! 

About 30 minutes later and VOILA!

Now on to the cork board! This was a bit more labor intensive but not too bad. 

Cork Board - before

Cork boards aren't the most stylish thing around so I decided to cover one with fabric and ribbon. First you need to measure your board to make sure that you buy enough fabric. Mine was big enough that I needed a whole yard so I happily skipped on over to Fancy Tiger Crafts to pick out something fantastic. And what I found was way more than fantastic - I found Amazingly-Fantastically-AWESOME. As soon as I saw it, it just sang out to me - Far Far Away 3 by Heather Ross. So much much whimsy, so much class.  I hugged the bolt and did a little jig all the way to the cutting counter (this may or may not be an exaggerated story...)

Next I rummaged through my husband's tool box for the staple gun and last but not least, pulled out my trusty tacky glue and I was off to the races! I laid it out on the floor so that I could make sure I had enough overlap on the back to staple, glue and just give it overall sturdiness and durability. I pulled in my first corner and stapled my fabric onto the back of the board. 

Yellow nail polish not required but certainly a lot of fun

I stapled down the rest of the side of the board and then glued the excess fabric down. I did this because once you start using your board and sticking pins into the fabric, it's going to give it a lot of wear and loosen the fabric. By gluing it down, it helps to make the fabric that much more taut and supported.

Repeat the staple-and-glue process for the opposite side of the board - I did the two longest edges first. Then at the two shortest sides, I did a half-fold sort of thing (so that I wouldn't have weird fabric corners on my finished project) and stapled my corners and glued the excess fabric down.

Here's what the back of the board looked like when I was done:

Now flip it over and cut your ribbon pieces - 1 for each side. Remember to cut the ribbon long enough to have excess to glue to the back. 

Apply glue the whole length of the ribbon and holding the ribbon taut, hover over where you want to place the ribbon and place it on the fabric all at once. You should have a nice perfect line of ribbon. Now smooth your ribbon down to ensure that the fabric, glue and ribbon are all stuck together in crafty harmony. 

And VOILA! A Beautiful New Cork Board!

PS - the Fireplace Project was postponed...I haven't yet found the tile that I am looking for