Craft WIN

To take away the shame and chagrin of The Terrible Tie-Dye Incident, I finished making my new notice board today.

Ta- daaa:

It began life as a skanky old cork pinboard.

Ugh.  Please note the faded patches where it's been hanging in my study for SO LONG. 

I used wadding, fabric, ribbons and buttons, cunningly held in place with a combination of terrifyingly sticky spray glue, staples and prolific (and fluent) swearing to create a new thing of beauty from the ashes of the old. 

Aren't we posh?  Fruit on the sideboard and nobody ill. 

I did iron the fabric before I stapled it in place.  This is just to give the general idea. 

If you look closely, you may notice that the diamonds are not all exactly the same size.  If that sort of thing matters to you, sorry.  I measured by eye; next time I make one I shall use a tape measure I think.
The worst part was hand sewing all the buttons on at each intersection of the ribbon.  I think there were about 40 in total, and it took fucking hours.  HOURS.    Next time I might use a staplegun to hold the ribbon in place, and then carefully (and lazily) glue the buttons on to disguise the staples. 

So now I have a rather lovely fabric notice board, on which the Village Fete PRIZE certificate from Belgian Waffle sits in pride of place, among the Sherlock Holmes film cards and foreign receipts. 

The shark postcard is from Mr WithaY's Great White Shark tagging expedition to Mexico a couple of years ago.  He went away for two weeks to poke huge sharks with a stick.  Impressively, he also came back again. 

Now I  feel less artistically inept.  Plus it makes my study feel more organised, which is encouraging. 

Time for a celebratory cup of tea, I think.