Burlap Bulletin Board

I hope you all are enjoying your weekend! We are spending the weekend at my parent's house visiting friends and family. Frank visited his grandparents for a while and I visited a very dear friend for lunch at Cracker Barrel! It was so nice to just relax and chat about life. Such a stress reliever!

Another stress reliever for me is doing a project! So, of course I brought my project to my parent's house and roped them into helping me...

Remember that burlap I showed you on Thursday?

And remember a few weeks ago when I brainstormed this project (here) ?

Source

Well, this is what I did!

Isn't this a much prettier alternative to just a plain ol' bulletin board?  And a HUGE upgrade from our original cork board squares?

I would say that is a big fat YES!

So, as I explained in my post on Thursday (here), I picked up this burlap for about $7.99 at Jo-Ann's Fabric. I just got one  yard and ended up with much more than I needed. I also picked up two boxes of black upholstery pins to make a border. 

We had previously purchased a plain cork board from Target for $5.99. We also needed a staple gun, a hammer, and a utility knife. I took out the clamp to use in order to pull the burlap tight enough, but I ended up just using another person (my Mom) to help me hold it together while I stapled. Apparently she trusted I wouldn't sever one of her fingers!

First I had to cut the burlap to size. You want to leave about 2- 2 1/2 inches around the outside to pull on to make it tight. You can trim this later. 

Lay the bulletin board face down and start in the middle on one of the sides by pulling the fabric tight and punch 3 staples to hold it in place. We stapled the burlap into the wooden frame, but we found that we needed to use the hammer sometimes if the staple did not go all the way into the wood. 

(Once the project was over we realized that it may have been easier to staple onto the board part instead...)

Then, just work your way around a few staples at a time. We did 3 staples in the center of each side. Then, we went back around and did 2 staples on either side of the original 3 staples. Continue until you've stapled all the way around pulling tight each time you staple.

We left the corners alone until everything else was stapled and turned the board around to make sure everything looked okay so far.

Then, we trimmed the excess fabric a bit to make the corners a bit easier.

For the corners, we stapled each side of the point and then folded the corner down flat. There are probably a few ways to do this, but the key is the make sure everything is folded down enough so that you don't see bulk from the front.

Because this particular board had metal plates for hanging, we cut out the squares around the plates with a utility knife. This worked, but required an extra staple on either side to keep the fabric from pulling away from the area that was cut.

We added a few extra staples to make sure everything was secure and flipped the board over to work on the upholstery pins. These are entirely cosmetic. But I really liked the way it seemed to finish it off!

I used a yardstick to evenly measure where I'd put my pins and pushed them into the cork a bit to hold them in place.

Then, I just tapped them in with a hammer going all the way around and making sure they were all straight.

Then,... voila! A MUCH prettier bulletin board!

The whole project took about an hour and a half...mostly because we had to call in for assistance since some of our staples weren't staying in...Daaaaad! Can you help us!? But overall it's definitely an easy and fairly cheap project.

Bulletin Board from Target- $5.99
Burlap (1 yard) - $7.99  (plain burlap was $3.99...I kind of splurged for the pretty print)
Upholstery pins (2 boxes) - $1.99 ea.

I can't wait until we get home to hang this below our shelf I showed you yesterday! (here)

What do you think?