Decorating a Cork Board – A Crafting Challenge

This post is from when I took part in a crafting competition and decorated a plain cork board for my kitchen wall.

I’m not really a craft person. Yes, I will sit around the table with kids and their glitter, glue and tissue paper for hours, but we are mostly just having fun and creating a mess. When it comes to grown up stuff I tend to shy away, I’d like to be good but I’m not.

I surprised myself back in March by attending a crafting afternoon with Hillarys Blinds and Joe Blogs. I think I was mostly interested in an afternoon of child free fun and adult interaction at first, but I did actually enjoy the crafting too. However, when I was contacted again to see if I wanted to do some crafting for a competition I decided that I’d sit this one out.

Then, I was painting my kitchen and had one of those light bulb ideas. I had a bare wall that I’d always used to display the kids art work and school certificates, but it was badly stained by all the blu-tack. I still wanted to display things so I though a cork board would be a good idea, but cork boards are so boring and office like. That’s when I decided to decorate one with some nice fabric…like the nice fabric that was being offered by Hillarys for their craft competition. They are offering a prize of £1000 to one lucky winner who transforms a piece of fabric from their Roman blinds and curtains collection into an incredible craft creation.

Next step was to rush off my e-mail to say I’d join in and to choose my fabric. Then I bought myself a cork board, I chose one 90cm by 60cm. Finally, I bought some fancy pins.

The fabric I chose is called Rayna Apple. I have just painted my kitchen green and I knew the colours in the fabric would fit in nicely. Also, I love how the fabric has bold blooms on it, I wanted a nice bold pattern to brighten up my wall, and as the wall is near the window it is really like bringing the outdoors in.

So here is my step-by-step guide to decorating a cork board. Remember, I’m a complete amateur so it’s a fairly simple task, but I’m really happy with the result and I hope I can inspire others to find their inner craft person too.

 How to Decorate a Cork Board

I painted my frame white with some emulsion paint.. You could leave it wooden, but I thought it would look nicer with the material

This was quite simple. I put the cork board on the material and drew around the edge then cut it out. Because I’d cut around the entire board, including the frame, I had enough material to fold over and make neat edges.

Starting at the top I folded a frame width of material over to make a neat edge. I then ironed the fold flat. I also took the opportunity to iron the entire piece of material so it would be neat and flat.

I folded down one edge of the material using the frame as a guide then I ironed down the fold. I then folded and ironed the other three edges. The next step was to put a pin in one corner while I gently pushed the folded edge into the frame. I repeated this around all four sides.

You could glue the fabric into place, but I found it sat quite neatly in the frame so I fixed in place with some pretty pins that I had bought. I put some in the four corners and a few down each side. I will keep these pins in place and used plainer pins for pinning things to my board.

As you can see from these two photos, the corkboard looks very different after it has been decorated.

I couldn’t wait to start pinning up my children’s art work and school certificates. I’m sure my corkboard will get plenty of use.

My lovely creation takes pride of place on my kitchen wall.

I think I may have caught the crafting bug!

This post is my entry into the Hillarys Craft Competition 2015