Covered Pin Board Tutorial

I've had these pin boards for a couple of months. I found them in Tesco for less than £2 each so I bought 4 of them hoping to cover them at some point.

My DD has already made a covered pin board with one of them but then other things got in the way and they've been languishing in my crafting room (the family think it's their TV room but I know differently). As it is the first day of the holidays today and we are just waiting to drop DD off for her Scout camp, I decided to finish the covered pin boards this morning and throw in a tutorial. I hope it's of some help.

Start with a pin board and cut some quilting wadding to the same shape.

I bought this from fabricland which is my favourite fabric shop as it's full of so many different styles of material and it is really cheap. I've visited their Kingston and Brighton store and always come away with something. This time I bought the wadding and a lovely music note fabric (chosen by DD) for covering the pin board.

Once you've cut the wadding to shape, cut the covering material so that it is about 2 inches larger than the pin board. It should look like this. Making sure that the everything is flat, use a staple gun to staple the material to the board. This will hold the material and the wadding in place. I used my father-in-law's staple gun which is industrial strength. The staples didn't always go all the way into the wood so I used a hammer at this point.




This is what it should look like from the back.

Now choose a ribbon (either the same colour as the material or a contrasting colour). Place it in the correct position on the front then staple it on the back. This is what it will look like from the back.

Finally, cut out a piece of material the same size as the pin board and staple it over all the rough edges and ribbon. This is what the back should look like. Sorry about the poor quality picture - it was still early in the morning and the light wasn't very good. As you can see, my staples are not very neat but it will be hanging on the wall so no-one will be able to see the back.

And here are the three finished boards with a variety of ribbons. I used organza ribbon as I had quite a lot of it in my stash. I hate it when you start making something only to realise that you don't have enough ribbon to finish it so I tend to always buy more than I need.

I hope this gives you a bit of crafting inspiration. Now off to plan the applique for my next bag, take DD to scout camp drop off and fit in a walk in the North Downs.

More sharing

I love to see what other people have been creating around the world. This week has just been about work and sleep (except for my trip out to the theatre with DH on Wednesday which was an unexpected treat) but I've taken the opportunity to join a link party and one here to share some of my creative ideas from previous weeks. Feel free to have a look around and comment on the other posts.

I'm hoping that a holiday will encourage my creative juices to start flowing again and I'm looking forward to a week of jewellery designing, bag making, appliqué and baking. It's obviously starting to rub off on the rest of my family as my DD got I from school yesterday, donned her apron and started making fairy cakes of her day's birthday. I was so impressed. She even did all the washing up. Here are the plain version.

She then started making the glacé icing and learned a valuable lesson - you don't add the water first. We ended up using nearly half a packet of icing sugar to get the icing thick enough to use on the top of the cakes but we did find out that you can freeze unused icing. I've always said that life is a constant learning experience.

I hope you all have a wonderful day and I look forward to sharing all my makes with you next week.

Theatre trips

I don't go to the theatre very often. I tend to look out for bargain prices through sites such as lastminute.com and sometimes things come along that you just can't miss. On Tuesday I received an email from a friend offering free tickets at the New Victoria Theatre in Woking for Bohemian Rhapsody for Wednesday night. Now, I don't normally go out on a school night as I feel like a wreck the following day (and no, that's not my age speaking as it's always been the same) but I felt that I couldn't really pass up this opportunity. And this is what we went to see....




Wonderful singing, totally tacky dancing and overall a rip roaring night out. There was even a standing ovation at the end. And then, I received another email today - free tickets for Soul Sister, the story of Ike and Tina Turner - for next week. It's like buses, none come along and then two at once. So we're off to the theatre again next week to see this....





Next week is half term so this is just perfect. We'll even be taking my mum and dad too and all for free.

Countryside ramble

Balm to the soul - I recommend it for some time out.

Link party

I've joined another link party over at Craft-O-Maniac. Click on the image below to see all the other links. There's lots of inspiration to be had - I just need to find some extra time.

I was planning on going for a walk when I got home today but we went food shopping instead. Sainsbury's is my normal supermarket of choice but today we went over to Morrisons. I needed fruit and vegetables but it became a bit of a treat shop as my dd took her first GCSE exam today. Now off to cook the dinner. Have a lovely evening.

Busy, busy day

Do you ever get to the end of a day and wonder how you managed to fit everything in? Today was one of those days. I made a bag in the morning, baked flapjacks, bread and rock cakes, went for a lovely walk with my family to see the bluebells and made pizza for dinner. Here is my day in pictures.

If you're in the area, the bluebells are beautiful at Hatchlands Park at the moment. I'll be going back to work tomorrow for a rest! Only kidding, I'll be planning lessons, marking and working late nights. I'm going to make the most of the rest of the day - roll on the apple pie. Thank you to The Little Red Barn Baking Book for the lovely recipe. A wonderful baking book with the best brownie recipe.

Morning makes

It always amazes that when I can have a lie in, I seem to wake up early. This morning, I was up at 7.30am to finish the second appliqué bag. This one was based around beach huts. I had some squares of fabric left over from a Bat Mitzvah. It's the tradition in our synagogue to throw marshmallows wrapped in fabric after the Torah has been read during the Bat Mitzvah ceremony so there were quite a few scraps of material lying around. I hate waste so we collected up the scraps for the next project and the ribbon that was used to tie them up. The ribbon on the owl appliqué was from the ceremony. I've just finished the second bag and here it is in all it's glory.

I've now moved on to listening to the Archer's omnibus, making the week's flapjack and the dough for tonight's pizza. I'm hoping we'll get out for a family walk this afternoon to spot bluebells (although ds has decided we need to cycle to the bluebells). Hope you're all having a lovely day.