DIY Quick Hanging Fabric Bulletin Board

I don’t know about you guys, but sometimes I get in this mode where all of my creative energy gets focused on making projects that utilize the material that I already have at home.

While I love taking trips to the craft store, sometimes you start to see your bank account slowly go down and you realize that you need to tone it back a little bit, after all you probably have some amount fo craft supplies back at home that need some love.

Now that I recently started sewing, I am building up a large amount of fabric scraps that I have been eager to find a use for. I have also been on a streak of trying to make practical home decor items. That coupled with my home office becoming more of a reality, I have been wanting to make a bulletin board for a while now, and it has finally happened!

Personally I made this with things that I already had around the house, but if you have to go out and get these materials, it really shouldn’t break the bank, especially when you use the everyday coupons at places like Michaels, JoAnn, and Hobby Lobby. It also easily can be finished in about 30 minutes! So let’s dive in shall we?

Materials

• 1 Fat Quarter of Fabric (18″ X 21″)
• 3 Yards of Pom Pom Ribbon
• 1′ X 1′ piece of cardboard
• 1′ X 1′ some kind of squishy material
• Optional extra embellishments
• Hot Glue Gun
• Scissors

For the “squishy material”, i’m going to be 100% honest, I don’t know what the stuff I used is called, but I know I got it at Daiso. It is reflective on one side and a plastic spongey material on the other side. In general just try to find something with a little bit more squish to put between the fabric and the cardboard.

Construction

First you are going to cut out your piece of cardboard to 1′ X 1′. I had a box from Bath and Body Works which is why the cardboard is a cute gingham, it happened to be the perfect size!

Once you have your cardboard cute out, you can place it over whatever squishy material you are using and trace over it

Cut out your squishy material and hot glue it onto your cardboard piece. Since hot glue dries so fast, I glued an x onto the middle of cardboard piece and lined it up quickly with the squish material to keep it more structured. I then peeled up the edge pieces of the material and glued it down all along the edges.

Cut off any excess that you may have. It you traced and cut perfectly, but if you are kinda lazy like me, you will probably have a little bit of excess.

Place the 1′ X 1′ piece over your fat quarter of fabric. The fat quarter should be a quite a bit larger than the cardboard piece. If you wish to trim off most of the excess to use for something else, do that by all means! Just make sure you have at least 1″ of excess fabric around each side.

In the picture I had the squish side facing toward me, but don’t do that! haha. Make sure you have the squish side of the square against the fabric and have the cardboard facing you.

Simply fold the fabric over the edge of the square and hot glue it down. Similar to the way you glued earlier, since the hot glue dries really fast probably do little sections at a time to make sure all of the sections get glued down securely. The hot glue, as you can assume, is very hot so have something other than you hand to press the fabric down onto the glue so that you don’t burn yourself.

Once you have it all glued down, the back won’t be beautiful, but you won’t see it, so no harm done right? Flip the piece over and start gluing on your pom pom trim in small sections with small dots of hot glue. This is literally the part that took the most time and even then it was only 10-15 minutes.

Once you get all of your pom pom trim glued on, you should have some ribbon left over, which you have use as your hanging string by gluing it onto the upper back of the board.

Additionally you can add any other little embellishments that you wish to add to the corners. I had these fabric flowers that I needed to use for something and this felt like the time to do it! Once you make any additions you’d like you are done!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! As always if you have any questions or want to share your finished product, feel free to do so in the comments or on instagram!

Easy DIY Yarn Coasters

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If there is one thing I have been looking for in every project that I have worked on lately, it is that I want it to be easy. As you may know, my motivation levels have been at an all time low, so my definition of easy doesn’t always coincide with others. I’m sure we have all seen those DIY tutorials that have EASY slapped all over the title and then you get to the nitty gritty and it doesn’t actually seem that simple.

Sometimes we just need the simple satisfaction of getting something done, and that is usually easiest to do when the project takes minimal supplies and can be finished in under an hour or so, because that is often my limit of when my motivation will run out.

Another thing that I always try to look for in a project is that it is practical. If i’m going to dedicate my time to making something, I’d like it to be something that I will use and brownie points if it can save me money in some way.

My boyfriend and I are planning on getting our first home soon, up until now we have only had apartments, which in my opinion just can never really feel like a true home. Now, there are a million reasons why I am incredibly thrilled at the prospect of having an actual home, but i’m not fooling myself into thinking that it will be a walk in the park either.

One things that has definitely been on my mind is simply how many new things we will have to buy when the time comes to actually move. Generally I would like to say that I am a fairly frugal person, so the thought of a home essential shopping spree is a little stressful.

With that in mind, I have been trying to think of practical projects I can DIY so it can be one thing we can check off the list. I know I can’t build a bookshelf or a washing machine, but if there are little things I can work up that will help us in our new home then I’m gonna go for it.

The idea of making coasters has been stuck in my mind for so long, but there was never any design or method that I could stick through making multiples of. So I rummaged around my craft supplies to see what I already had and could make use of and soon enough I had 5 coasters in about an hour! (My ideal project! *insert heart eyes here*)

Materials

• Felt (or any stable material you can cut into a circle and put glue on)
• A cup or container to trace your circle
• Hot Glue Gun/ Refills of Hot Glue Sticks
• 2 Colors (or more) of Yarn (I recommend using a 100% cotton yarn such as Lily Sugar and Cream as it is more heat safe than other fibers if you plan on using the coaster for hot drinks)
• Scissors

Cut The Felt

This step is very self explanatory, but simply take whatever glass or container you wish to be the stencil for your coaster (or this can absolutely be made into any shape you’d like), place the stencil on the felt and trace around it. Then cut out the piece that you have traced.

Constructing The Coaster

At this point we can literally just jump into constructing the coaster. you will be using quite a bit of a hot glue and it can get messy so make sure you set something down on your work space that you don’t mind getting glue all over.

The entire process is really rather straightforward and simple. Take your yarn (which you don’t need to cut from the skein yet) and align as many strands as you would like in the pattern that you would like them to repeat on the coaster (you can get as creative as you want here really). Make sure you have them ready to place onto the coaster as the glue will dry quickly.

Starting from the top of the felt piece, apply a line of hot glue, line up your yarn above the hot glue, making sure to have a little bit of the yarn strands go over the edges of your felt. Once you have it positioned, press the yarn into the hot glue (pressing upwards slightly to get it as close to the top edge of the felt as possible). Clip your yarn strands, again leaving a little bit over the edge of the felt.

As usual when working with hot glue, be sure to be careful because the glue, much like the name implies, is hot. I have fallen victim to hot glue burns plenty of times in my day (at the ripe age of 25) and they are no fun.

As to be expected, you simply continue the last step of apply glue and pressing down your patterned strands of yarn all the way down the coaster.

When you have glued on all of your yarn strands, you will flip the coaster over, so that you have a clear line to follow when trimming the extra yarn bits on the edges. Then when you turn it over, you will have a clean circle!

There you have it!! It is super easy to whip up a whole set of these in under an hour and it doesn’t take a lot of supplies at all!. I chose to experiment with a border for the coaster as shown below, but i decided to make the rest of the without the border in the end. It is a very simple concept that you can get as creative as you want with!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! As always if you end up making your own coasters feel free to tag me on social media if you share any photos! I’d love to see your work! Additionally if you have any questions please email me or leave it in the comment section below. Happy crafting!

Ocean Breeze Desk Mat Crochet Pattern

I have come to the realization that I never let myself do any “simple” projects. In my mind, creating things that aren’t elaborate feels like a waste of time, which of course isn’t true. I stress myself out a lot over projects not being “good enough” or “unique enough”, when the truth is what I really shouldn’t wast my time on, is worrying about things not being perfect all of the time. It is an idea that I am trying to get used to, so I really want to  let myself feel more comfortable writing more simple patterns that don’t take weeks to design and are just easy, fun, and cute. So the first pattern that I came up with on this new journey is The Ocean Breeze Desk Mat!