DIY: Memo Board Tutorial

A new tutorial! Well actually it's more of a little DIY walk through but I'm hoping you'll be able to be inspired by it at least. I recently found an awesome memo board in a thrift store which was just dying for a little make over.

As you can tell, it looked a bit, well... boring. It is amazing what a bit of paint can do, so let me show you!

All you need is: Acrylic Paint, Paint Brushes, Fabric, Deco Tape, fun shaped Buttons and some flat drawing pins.

First of all you want to paint all of the wood. This took about 4-5 coats using white. I wasn't too worried about going on to the cork part as that would be covered later, but I tried my best to keep the paint off the white board area.

Next, I cut a piece of fabric I liked to size so that it would fit in the corkboard area. I then generously painted the cork with PVA glue and glued the fabric in place.

You want to get your fabric as tight as possible and don't want to leave any bumps where you might have excess glue. To combat this, get a piece of card and holding down on one end of the fabric (you will get a bit sticky!) just slide the piece of card across. Any excess glue will come out and you can just wipe that away.

This will take a little while to dry so make sure to leave it for a while (I did it so it dried overnight).

The next thing I did was choose some pretty deco tape and stuck it on (rocket science, I know!). Deco tape is surprisingly sticky and it stays on really well on wood. Washi/masking tape would also work well here.

I added some more deco tape and voila! I now have a very pretty memo board/stationary holder!



I hope this has inspired! More tutorials will be coming your way soon!

Ticket Wallet Tutorial

So in November I shall be going to several concerts and I thought I really need to get the show tickets organised as well as the train tickets. Hence the idea of a ticket wallet was born! It was very simple to make, only took a couple of hours. It would work pretty well for any kind of tickets, you would just need to adjust the sizes a little.



But if you want to make one like mine, keep reading for the tutorial. :) Bare in mind I've never written one of these before so if I don't make any sense feel free to ask questions in the comments.

1. First of all, gather the materials you'll need: 4x Different Coloured Felt, Different Coloured Embroidery Thread, Sharp Needle, Scissors, Selection of Buttons, Pins, Ruler, Pencil/Pen.

2. Okay, so the first thing you need to do is figure out what colour you want the outside and inside to be. I chose a dark blue for the outside and light blue for the inside. From these, cut 2 pieces 12cm x 30cm.

3. Fold both in half. With the piece of felt you want as the front, design your cover. I just did a bit of (very) basic embroidery, but you could make this as elaborate as you like. :)

4. Okay so put the front piece to one side and now pick up the "inside" piece (ie the light blue for me). Now on one side I wanted to have my train tickets and the other I used for my concert tickets. Obviously the sizes mentioned a very specific to the sizes of my tickets, but it wouldn't take much to adjust them.

5. So I used 2 different colour pieces of felt. I used the orange for the concert tickets, cutting 2 pieces 11cm x 2.5cm. For the train ticket slot I cut a piece of yellow felt 13.5cm x 7.5cm and rounded the bottom corners.

6. Pin the yellow and orange in place, baring in mind where the fold is!

7. So for the orange pieces I did some fastening stitches at the top before sewing in the buttons just to give it a bit of extra strength. Then for the yellow I used a running stitch, you'll notice I put a split in the middle of the yellow as I wanted to keep some train tickets separate so you don't need to do this step.

8. If you want your wallet to close securely, read on. Cut a piece of felt (I used light blue) 6cm x 3cm and round the corners on one end. Using a small dab of fabric glue, position on the back side of the front cover as demonstrated in the picture. Add another dab of glue on top (nowhere else!) and position the inside piece (the light blue) on top. Wait to dry. Cut a button hole in the new flap and on the front of the wallet sew in a coordinating button.

9. Okay, so being careful as you're now attached via glue, pin the rest of the wallet together to make it easier to sew.

10. And start sewing around the edge. I used blanket stitch all the way around, doing a bit of running stitch of the flap to further strengthen it. Add your tickets and you're ready to go!!



Please let me know if you use this tutorial, or if it made no sense whatsoever! I'd love to see what others make with it!