chalk board to bulletin board.

Before we left for vacation I finished my oldest's new bedroom, which used to be the playroom/guestroom. One of the items I wanted to put in his room was a bulletin board to display his artwork and medals. Here is what I came up with. It's a lot larger than what it appears in this photo.

I didn't want to spend anything on it so I put to use this chalkboard you might remember from our holiday home tour. The board never wrote well due to some texture on it so I didn't mind making it into a cork board instead.

Since red is the main accent color in his room I decided a bright fire engine red would work best for this project, I was also craving some red after seeing 2 beautiful red dresser projects that same week. The red was a bit too bright so I toned it down with some Annie Sloan dark wax I had on hand.

It not only gave me the color I wanted but helps to protect and seal it too. I painted some of the chalk board area too in case it showed after the cork was put on.

I then rolled out my cork sheet that I had laying around in the garage waiting to be used and tried to cut it as evenly as I could the same dimensions as the inside of my frame. I found that scissors worked best compared to a razor to cut the cork.

I couldn't take pictures of the next step because I had to work fast but I used a combination of hot glue and spray adhesive to adhere the cork to the board. First I put some hot glue on one side close tot he edge and pressed the edge of the cork on to it and let it dry for a minute. Then I sprayed the adhesive onto the board for the middle area and pressed the cork on to it. To finish it off I used hot glue again on the opposite side to get it to stay in place good. I then tried my best to get as much hot glue around the other 2 edges by carefully lifting up the cork edges and squirting some hot glue in between the board and the cork. Does that make sense? Basically there is hot glue around all edges for a secure adhesive and spray in the middle to keep it from bubbling up.

The back already had a wire picture hanging device on it but I wanted the board to hang horizontal so I unscrewed the eyelet hooks and re-screwed them in tot he opposite sides.

This is what they look like.

And here it is ready to hang horizontally. I also positioned the wire near the top of the frame so it would hang better and jet out form the wall as much.

The finished product full of some of my favorite pieces of art from him and his medals.

Later this week you'll get to see the full tour of the room, and spaces in our house you have yet to see!

Here is another post about his bedding for the room.

Hope you're enjoying your summer, ours is going by quick already, lots of traveling, projects, sleeping in, and trying to relax!

~Meg

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