Pin There, Done That!

First off, I am borrowing the title for today's post from Megan at Fit Crafty English Teacher.  Megan has shared a few of her Pinterest projects on her blog recently, and since I FINALLY made one of the many DIY projects I've pinned on Pinterest, I thought I should probably share it!  2 or so years ago, before the days of Pinterest, I decided I wanted to make a framed pin board for my bedroom to hold and display jewelry.  Since I'm not the craftiest, this idea did exactly what most of my grand ideas do--stayed an idea.  Once I discovered Pinterest over the summer, though, I remembered this project when I saw a bunch of different examples of jewelry boards during my hours spent browsing pins...Like these:

source

source

None of the frames I saw were EXACTLY what I wanted, but they got my wheels turning with ideas of my own.  So, what's an un-crafty girl to do with an idea?  You guessed it: share it with mommy and daddy.  Yup, I showed my pins to my parents and explained what I wanted to do.  Thankfully, I have parents who love projects!  My dad found an ugly GOLD frame in the back of our basement that he stained to have a pretty brown-gold antique look.  I bought a yard of fabric, some batting, and some cork.  Mom and I wrapped the cork board in batting and fabric, and I had my very first experience using a staple gun to secure it down.  Next was the lace fiasco...I decided I wanted to attach lace to the board like the top picture so that I could hang earrings from it.  Only problem was that all of the lace I found at the fabric store was too delicate.  Mom produced a yard or so of bright blue lace from one of her many crafting drawers, and we proceeded to soak it in bleach and then tea to take the color out and give it a pretty cream color.

Before & After: 

 Mom sewed the lace onto the fabric by hand and dad secured it all inside the frame, and voila!  The finished product:

I hung the necklaces and bracelets from pearl-topped straight pins (like the kind for boutineers), which you can get at any fabric store.  Earrings are hung from the lace.  I love the way it turned out!  Once we finally finished, Dad commented that the whole project went down like something of a relay with all of us working on different parts, and that none of us could have made the whole thing on our own.  I feel though that my contributions ended up being pretty minimal in the end...Thank goodness for crafty parents!