How to Make a Memo Board from an Empty Frame

When I look at pictures at estate sales, I’m usually looking at the frame as for the picture. And sometimes I even find empty frames that I think are pretty, like this one.

I knew as soon as I bought it that I wanted to make a kind of memo/bulletin board out of it.

I had the perfect spot for it in the kitchen, and I needed a place to put all those pictures, ticket stubs, and postcards you collect, but don’t know what to do with.

The first thing I did was cut a piece of cardboard down to the size of the frame opening. An old bulletin board or cork board would work better, but this is what I had on hand.

I covered the cardboard with fabric, gluing the sides around the back.

The back can get really ugly. It honestly doesn’t get much uglier than what I’m about to show you. Feel free to do it more neatly than I did!

I then collected some ribbon and tacks to create something on the front of the board to hold the items on.

Again, ugly, ugly, ugly. I just played around with this until the pieces of ribbon were where I wanted them.

Then I secured all the stuff in the back with good old (ugly) duct tape.

Now as hideous as the back looks, the front turned out just like I wanted it to.

The fun part is starting to collect your items. You can start slow and add to it as you go.

I used to be a scrapbooker, but not so much anymore. This feels kind of like a scrapbook for my wall.

When I ran across some flour-de-lis push pins at Homegoods, I used them to secure the “intersections” of the ribbon and help hold things in place.

I like the “contained crazy” look, where everything is kind of haphazard, but kept reined it by the frame.

This post is part of Transformation Thursday.