Lemonade and Lollypops: Ribbon Board

OK- by now some of you may be getting tired of me posting about things that I made for the baby shower. This WAS made for the shower BUT with the plan behind it to put it in my daughter's room after that. I have seen ribbon boards all over and especially in places like Pottery Barn Kids where they usually sell them with frames, which I personally prefer.

This is a fairly inexpensive and definitely easy project to put together. For those of you who swear you can't sew (which I don't believe:), this is a no sew fabric project!

First, I ran over to the thrift store in our town and grabbed a frame that I liked. I didn't take a picture of it with the embroidery still inside it before I disassembled it but I ended up using the old base for the fabric (which you will see when you continue on to pictures of the back.)

My husband sanded down the frame for me before I painted it. I know that it is always wise to prime wood before painting but I didn't have any and wanted this to be a cheap project, so I proceeded without it. My advice- DON'T SKIP THE PRIMER! It turned out alright in the end but if you see it in person, I wish that it was a little more even and smooth but that might just be the perfectionist in me.

Next, it's time to make the push pins. There are soooo many places that show you how to make these, and they're soooo easy that I'm not going to go through how to make them. Honestly, if you buy the kit for fabric covered buttons, the instructions are so easy that you don't really need a tutorial on how to do them. So in the end, I'll just tell you to look HERE to find out how to make them if you want to see some pictures.

I apologize that I was going so crazy when making everything before the shower that I got lazy about taking pictures for every step.

I cut a piece of Warm & Natural cotton batting to the exact size of the board (you can use foam board but I just used the board and cardboard that were already in the frame.) It is the exact size of the frame because you don't want the bulkiness of the batting to wrap around to the backside of the board. A thin batting of any sort would work but I personally just use Warm & Natural for almost everything.

For the next step, a staple gun would be ideal but seeing that I didn't have one and again, wanted to keep this cheap, I used thumbtacks instead and they worked just fine! Simply cut your fabric to be a few inches larger than your board on all sides. First lay down the fabric (right side down) on a table, lay the batting in the center, place the board on top, being careful to line up the board with the batting.

Start on one side and wrap the fabric tightly around to the back of the board. Every couple inches, put a tack firmly into board to secure fabric. Next, do the side exact opposite from the one where you started to make sure the fabric stays even. Then finish the last two sides. Check over whole backside (and look at the front) to make sure the fabric is even everywhere and add any tacks as necessary.

OK- not being computer savvy, I couldn't figure out how to put arrows on the picture to point at the areas so I will have to explain this. Take one strip of ribbon and secure it in on the backside of one corner. Pulling the ribbon tight, secure in the opposite corner. Repeat with the other two corners. Next, measure each side and make a small mark in the very middle of each side. Connect the middle of one side with the middle of the very next side, creating a triangle in the corner. Continue this on all corners until you have created a diamond shape on the board.

At each point where the ribbon intersects, firmly push a fabric covered push pins. Put your fabric board in the frame and you're done! I am planning to cover the back of mine somehow- just so that the pins and old frame aren't exposed but I'll get to that another day!