Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Ballard Inspired Burlap Board

You know the feeling, when it gets to be late Sunday afternoon, and you're wondering where the weekend went and what do I have to show for my time? That was me, this past Sunday, 4:30 PM. And the answer to my question was, not so much. (I did complete a 5K earlier that morning, but I was thinking in more of a crafty way. And before you get way too impressed by my physical feats, I walked the 3.1 miles and took almost an hour doing it!)
Anyway, I wanted to make something, and time was a-wasting.

Lately, in my blog and pinterest browsing, I came across this Ballard Designs magnetic message board fairly often:
This was the ticket. I figured with a few modifications, and what I had on hand, I could whip up something. This is what I came up with.



There are quite a few tutorials on line on how to go about this. Here's my version.

For the foundation of the board, I used this old, gross baking sheet, that was heading to the recycling can:


I didn't have any burlap, but I did have some osnaburg (aka poor man's linen) leftover from previous projects. My scrap wasn't quite large enough, so I added a few inches to each side, and cut the whole thing out about 2-3 inches larger that the pan, so I could wrap the edges.
Next, to adhere the fabric to the pan. First, I tried hot glue. Let me save you some time here. Don't even try the hot glue. It's bumpy and dries much too quickly.

Instead, bring on my favorite spray glue! Give the bottom of the pan (which is going to be the front of our board) a light spraying. It does just the trick.

Smooth out your fabric as you lay it on the pan, then flip the whole thing over. Here, I just sprayed the outside edges.


Wrap your edges to the back, (front of the pan) and give them a good pinch. Mitre the corners the best you can.

For a hanger, I hot glued some twill measuring tape I had. Just a big glob of hot glue will work.
At this point, I was done with the back. You could get fancy and add another piece of fabric to cover all your mess, but it was about 5:30 at this point and I still had to make dinner.

The original board has a nicely stenciled monogram. I wanted to try some stamping. On a scrap piece of osnaburg, with some stazon, I did a practice run. Nice!

I did a little stamping all over the board. I'm by no means an expert stamper, so it's a little wonky. But, overall, I like it.

For the magnets, I found some decorative brads in my stash, snipped off the "brad" part, and used E6000 to glue some super strong magnets to the back.


So, in about an hour and a half (including photos!) here is my finished magnet board:



And my feeling of accomplishment was complete!

2 comments:

sew_inspired said...

cute...I especially like the measuring tape hanger and bow :)

craftytammie said...

i love it! these would make good gifts. and i'm so poor, i always thought osnaburg WAS linen. up until, oh, six months ago. :D