DIY Ribbon Bow Board

I decided the other day that I needed more creative storage for my daughter's growing hair bow collection. The solution: a ribbon bow board, of course! Off to Pinterest I went to see if there were any DIY tutorials. I wasn't happy with any one solution so I combined a few of the ideas and created my own. Here's a list of the supplies I ended up using:

• Garage sale/Thrift store picture frame (or you could buy one)
• Spray paint (only if your frame needs some revamping)
• Matte Board (also refered to as foam core)
• Exacto knife or box cutter
• Batting (used for quilts)
• Hot glue and a hot glue gun
• Fabric of your choice
• Ribbon of your choice
• Tape (optional)
• Thread
• Needle
• Buttons

I found the frame at a garage sale for only $1 because the glass was broke. Little did they know that I didn't even want it for the glass or that hideous picture (hehe).

I started out my project by gathering up some of my supplies I would need and cutting away the paper from the back of the frame.

I was happy to find heavy duty staples holding in the existing matte. Now I wouldn't have to figure out how to get the fabric board to stay put later.

From here, you want to take the old matte that you took out of the frame and trace around it on top of the foam core. Then you want to cut out your trace carefully with an exacto knife. I realized after cutting mine out that I should have cut a slight bit inside the line so remember that tip! You have to allow for that little bit of extra bulge from the fabric wrapping around.

After cutting out the foam core, I decided to go get my spray paint on. My frame was dingy and gold (not my favorite color in the world) so I decided to spray paint it white.

My next step was to hot glue down some batting on the foam core. I only did one layer but you might want to add one more for more puff...up to you.

Then just trim the excess away from the edges. Now you're ready to glue down your fabric. Make sure it's ironed and doesn't have any wrinkles. And then just do one side at a time pulling it tight each time. You really don't want the fabric to be loose.

And here's an up close on my corner...it's not the greatest but it looks good from the front!

Now comes the tricky part...figuring out how you want your ribbon to lay. I wanted mine to be criss-crossed but you could always just do squares. I laid the ribbon out how I wanted it first and cut all of the pieces. Then I used tape to hold the ribbon in place while I hot glued. Again, make sure they're tight when you glue them down!

The back of the board starts to look really messy but that's okay! The next step is where I differed from most of the other tutorials I found on the internet. I didn't like the idea of just hot gluing the buttons down. It seemed like if the buttons weren't actually sewed on that this whole project was just meant to not last. Plus, I really wanted the buttons pulled down tight so I could get that puffy effect. I bought some pretty glass buttons off of ebay for a couple dollars. I wanted something kind of unique.

I liked that they were all different. Next came my least favorite part of this project but I'm glad I did it; sewing on the buttons. I found some pretty purple thread and a needle and went to work. I also chose to add a piece of fabric to the backside to prevent the thread from tearing through the foam core if the buttons were ever pulled on. If you can't tell, I am kind of a perfectionist and tend to overdue things, LOL.

The hardest part about sewing the buttons on this is that you are sewing through foam core and not fabric...it's kind of like blind sewing but I managed (and I'm no sewing expert, believe me).

Anyway, 9 buttons later and I was almost finished. Now all that was left was to put my creation into the spray painted frame and secure the staples back down.

And there you have it! My DIY ribbon bow board.