 I started with cheap art backing board, although I found afterwards that cork was just as cheap, I was nervous that stitching into cork would make it break up... |  My finished notice board :) |
After blue-tac-ing a print out calender to the wall two days ago I took a step back and thought "well that looks plain". Yesterday I took down the calender and looked to google for notice-board inspiration. I found some beautiful fabric notice boards, criss crossed with ribbon (like this one).. and decided that none of them spoke to me as much as the old brown paper I had lying in the corner of my art room. So here is my mostly-paper-mixed-media notice board design!
First I picked up a piece of backing board that would withstand a whole bunch of holes being made in it, covered it with some soft materials to round the edges and give pins something to grab onto, and wrapped it with my brown paper. These were all held on tight with clips while I sew them on using running stitch and some thick wool.
The layers were: Kitchen blue cloth, white textured wall paper, brown wrapping paper from a parcel I received previously. All these materials were lying around the room before I began - yay for re-purposing :)
The layers were: Kitchen blue cloth, white textured wall paper, brown wrapping paper from a parcel I received previously. All these materials were lying around the room before I began - yay for re-purposing :)
After re-blue-tac-ing my calender on I thought - what else could this notice board need? A tool belt of course! I then stitched on a piece of flowery material I had lying around so that I had 3 handy compartments for tools on the left hand side. I also added little bits of origami and drawings I hadn't found a place for yet.
But it still looked so plain!
There was nothing for it but to go outside and take a long hard think about my design. Maybe some time in the garden would inspire the next step... the dew looks so beautiful on the lawn this time of year, and so I decided to create a mini lawn on my notice board, out of old scraps of felt and my 2012 calender of course. Oh, and the green crepe my brown bag had been held together using. Such cute packaging from etsy sellers, no?! First I cut out my lawn free hand and arranged the various leaves together to form a lawn, if you're trying this yourself, just persevere, my leaves looked nothing like grass on their own, it's all in the arrangement.
My mixed-media lawn
After moving this onto the notice board I decided to glue down each leaf at the bottom, and then weighed it down with cups and rocks while I got on with another project...
I quickly realised post-glue that PVA alone was not gonna hold felt to waxed paper, and stitched all the way along, making sure each leaf was stitched in. Finally I covered this stitching with some green ribbon I couldn't resist last time I went shopping... just to add to the overall green-ness. So here's my finished project. I love it, I'm imagining I'll use my mini clothes pegs to attach on what I would like to do in the garden, for my craft business, and more.. the possibilities are endless!
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