My diy bulletin boards

I have always been attracted to those rolls of corkboard you see in hardware stores or 99 cent stores. What are they used for? Shelf lining? You can't use it as a bulletin board on its own, because if you stick it on a hard surface it's too thin for pushpins! They will fall out and litter your floor with danger and potential tetanus plus you will step on your photos and then be sad. But backing the cork with foamcore is perfect.

I long ago made the bear bulletin board, because our kitchen made echoes when you clapped. Sounds bounced from glossy cabinet to painted floor to hard plaster walls and made you feel like you were in a concrete hallway. One usually uses fabric, rugs or bookshelves to absorb sound, but in a kitchen? Ick. Cork was the answer.

As you can see, I haven't actually pinned up much on it—because August reaches out and pulls everything off. So all we have is our list of resolutions from New Year's, which is handy. We still do quite a lot of them! But we have yet to take August to the Bronx Zoo, and we realized he is not ready for car-camping. Sigh.

The house-shaped corkboard was inspired by this one by Ferm Living:

Ferm Living's board is significantly better, that pink trim is luscious and like summer nail polish, but I needed a board this week and was too itchy to wait for one to be shipped from Europe. And despite the little whisper of guilt in the back of my head I am so so happy to have a board up with my to-do's on it and newborn photo of my baby. He was born fuzzy.

I don't have any diy instructions, but it's easy—stick the cork-lining to a piece of foamcore, trace a shape you like on the back of the foamcore (don't forget to mirror it), then cut out with an exacto blade. if you want clean edges just angle your blade inwards and you will get a nice sharp look to your edges. That's it!

Photo of bottom corkboard courtesy Ferm Living