How to Make Fabric Bulletin Boards

Fabric bulletin boards can be expensive, but you can easily and inexpensively make one of your own.

I’ve been making some changes to my laundry room since my dad built a pedestal for my washer and dryer.

I showed off some of those changes last month, in my laundry room makeover post. In that, I mentioned that I had a creative idea for covering up the electrical panel in the laundry room.

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Well, it’s taken me a month to finish that little project, and my plans changed.

Originally, I had planned to make a fabric covered metal bulletin board using sheeting metal, inspired by something I saw on A little of this, a little of that. Easier imagined than done. I couldn’t find cheap-o joist sheeting at my local hardware store, or at least not in a 36-inch length, which is what I needed to cover the electrical panel in my laundry room. I know you can find fabric bulletin boards in stores and catalogs, but they can be very expensive.

So the project was put on hold.

Until two serendipitous things happened. I was reading my friend Suzy’s blog, Worthing Court, one day and saw how she’d transformed a plain bulletin board with fabric. Then, just a few days later I nabbed a brand new bulletin board at a yard sale for 50 cents!

As luck would have it, the yard sale bulletin board was 36 inches long — perfect for my space. (My bulletin board is similar to this one on Amazon.)

As luck would have it, I also had some pretty cotton fabric, purchased on a whim at JoAnn’s a few months ago. It was the perfect choice to add some color and brightness to my laundry room. And a project was born:

Because the fabric has a white background, I used white spray paint primer on the bulletin board. I didn’t care about coating it completely, but I did want to knock down the color a bit so you wouldn’t be able to see the cork underneath the fabric.

Next, I painted the frame in CeCe Caldwell chalk paint in Blue Montana Sky. I had just enough left in my sample jar to give the bulletin board frame two coats.

Next, I ironed my fabric and cut it slightly larger than the bulletin board. I affixed it to the cork using spray adhesive, being careful to smooth out any wrinkles.

I used my rotary cutter to trim the excess fabric.

Next step: choosing the trim to cover the cut edges. I tried many different colors of ribbon, trim and even some twisted nylon clothes line cording.

I finally settled on a combination of a blue crocheted trim from Pick Your Plum and a yellow pom-pom trim from Stampin’ Up. The blue trim was self-adhestive, which made it really easy to apply. I hot glued the tiny yellow pom-pom trim on top of it and didn’t burn my fingers once. Miracle. The exact pom pom trim I used is no longer available, but you’ll find lots of cute options here.

Here’s a closeup of the trim:

The finished project looks pretty hanging in my laundry room. And it’s easily removable should we need to access the electrical panel. Now, I just need to work on filling it up with important papers and keepsakes and artwork. The next time I show you the laundry room, I’m sure it will look much different than this!