How to Make Fabric Bulletin Boards

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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.

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!

Here’s another bulletin board project:

Vintage Botanicals Bulletin Board