How to make: a fun pin board

I've made a couple of these now for friends and they are fairly simple (depending on how you decide to cover the boards - the patchwork one took longer). Here are the basic steps to follow. Equipment needed:

• Cork boards (I bought ones that had sticky backing on one side)

• Thick cardboard

• Fabric of choice

• Ribbon of choice (optional)

• Decorative buttons (optional)

• Hot glue gun

• Pins (optional)

Step 1

Prepare your fabric ready to be stretched over the cork board.

For this orange pin board I used a few squares of different fabric and sewed them together to make a patchwork pattern first.

For this grey pin board I simply used some grey fleece fabric with grey leather scraps on the corners.

Step 2

Unpeel the backing and place your fabric over the cork board. Press down and smooth the fabric so there are no ripples.

Step 3

Turn the board over and cut the fabric diagonally across the corners.

Fold over the edges and glue down with the hot glue gun (be careful not to burn yourself as it can get very hot - trust me!)

On this pin board I then glued grey leather triangles across the corners to add decoration.

Step 4

If you want to add in the criss-cross ribbons, you can do so now. In this example, I made four cork board squares, so when adding the ribbons I placed them from top right corner to bottom left corner and top left corner to bottom right corner and glued them on the underside at the ends only. Then I placed the other smaller strips of ribbon and glued them down at the ends. I then added some decorative buttons in the middles where the ribbons crossed.

Step 5

Cut a piece of thick cardboard to stick on the back to hide the fabric folder overs and also as a base for sticking a hook on the back for it to hang on the wall (the no nails sticky hooks are great).

Step 6 (optional)

If you want you can also make some quick and easy decorative pins to go on the board. I had some very old laptops that were to be recycled so I took the keys off the keyboards and hot glued them to the head of some brass pins.

You could use anything to decorate the pin heads, buttons, scrabble tiles, cola bottle tops, varnished 'Love Heart' sweets. Be inventive and have some fun.

And that is it, you're all ready to wrap and gift it to a friend or hang it on your own wall. I'm hoping to make my own soon so I can pin up the little special drawings, notes and cards my nieces have sent me over the years.