Guest Project: DIY Inspiration Board

This great project for a padded fabric and ribbon inspiration board comes to us from Allison of the ever-inspiring Petit Elefant. Using fabric which matches your decor, create one for the kitchen or the crafting corner in your home.

DIY Ribbon and Fabric Inspiration Board

I decided 2009 was the year for me to have an inspiration board. I’ve seen them all over the place, I love them and I’ve wanted one of my own for a long time now. I’m a fairly crafty person, so I thought I’d just throw some materials together and see what I came up with. I’m really pleased with the result.

Materials:

Piece of fiberboard
Heavy-duty home decorating fabric
Ribbon
Quilt Batting
Staple Gun staples

First I bought a piece of fiberboard from Home Depot for around $3.50 and had it cut to the size specifications I needed, I measured the wall next to my desk beforehand so I knew exactly how much space I had to work with. I believe the board was 4’ x 6’ so I have plenty leftover to do a board for my daughter’s room.

Next I went to my local fabric store and selected some beautiful fabric. I’ve seen Inspiration Boards with plain backgrounds, but I wanted mine a little sussied up so I went with a really pretty home décor fabric in a color that I love green. I think I got maybe ½ yard, and it was on sale so it cost me about $4. I bought some ribbon in the same fabric store so I could see how the colors looked together great, if I may say so and I was off.

I think the ribbon was around $2. I also picked up some batting meant for a Christmas tree skirt; it was on clearance for something like .20 cents but any quilt batting will do. So all in all I was out less than $10 for the whole project. And it’s custom made so I love it. Easy peasy.

Quilt Batting for Inspiration Board

Steps:

Lay the fiberboard on a flat surface. You’re going to be doing some fabric stretching and stapling so you want it to be a sturdy flat surface.
Wrap a layer of batting around the board. Stretch it really tight across the board and start stapling away!
I wrapped two layers of batting around the board because I wanted mine to have a little dimension but you can do anything you’d like. It’s your inspiration board after all.
Now that the board is fully batting-ed, lay it down in the center of the fabric. Play with the positioning a little, to make sure you have enough fabric to go all the way around the board.
Pull the fabric around the back of the board until it’s really taut and start stapling. I stapled all over the back about every half-inch or so because I wanted the fabric to really stay put.
Now that you’ve got the fabric on, pull out your pretty ribbon. This is where the creative license really comes in. You’re going to want experiment a little with laying the ribbon across the board before you do any cutting. Just to see what kind of pattern you want. You can do a grid of squares, or do slanted rectangles like I did. It doesn’t really matter, just as long as you have intersections where the ribbon meets so you can tuck in all your photos & inspirations.
Once you have your ribbon laid out the way you want, cut it into pieces to be stapled. Make sure the pieces of ribbon are long enough to go around the back of the board at least a few inches. If you want, you can dab hot glue where the ribbon meets the back of the board before you staple. I’d still use a staple though because the ribbon needs to be able to hold up all your little mementos and you don’t want it falling down on the job. Pull it really taut before stapling. Also, depending how you’re going to be hanging your board, you might want to save a length of ribbon to use as your hanger. Make your pattern of ribbon and voila! You’re done. Unless of course you’re going to hang your board with a piece of ribbon. In which case you need to create a “hanger” out of ribbon. Just attach it the same way you did with the other ribbon, with glue and staples.