Not Just A Memo Board

I was all gung-ho with decorating my little man's room when the girly-o's got jealous and managed to distract me,

(surprise surpise)

with a project for their room.

We had talked for a while about finding some sort of large memo boards for their wall that they could use to hang up all the guck they find most important to keep and display... like an old Valentine or a particularly beautiful gum wrapper.

But I had visions of it being more than just your standard tuck-stuff-in-ribbons type of board. I wanted a dry erase area and a magnet area as well as the typical cork... and of course it had to be girly, but not too girly.

We started at the fabric store...

and found five fabrics that we all three agreed upon.

(Now, doesn't that sound simple?)

Maybe I should say - after four stores and much debate as to why faux fur would be inappropriate for the application... and several lessons on what constitutes 'clashing'... we actually found five we allllll liked. Whew!

Ok, the next step was easy. Cork is sold in 12 x 12 sheets,

(I never knew, did you?)

and is rather cheap at that... now if only I could think of other things to do with it... cozy basement flooring?

Maybe not.

We cut the fabrics just large enough to wrap aound the sides and hot glue down.

Turns out the girly-o's find hot glueing amazingly fun.

As in would not let me touch the glue gun fun.

So I let them take over and I sat back with my camera.

We (they) tucked the corners in, and pulled the fabric tight around the cork. Then I glued each square onto a huge foam core board from Hobby Lobby.

When it came to the actual assembly part, the glue gun had magically lost its fun, and I was suddenlly on my own again. Thus, no pictures. 

They each chose ribbons to glue on a square for the tuck-in type of display, and left a square or two blank for stickers. We are still searching for pretty push pins to use on them, too. For the wipe-off area we used a 12 x 12 plastic sheet protector glued in with the edges tucked under the cork boards and the open top on the side so they can change out the papers or fabrics inside. For the Magnet area we used sheet metal from Home Depot,

(again with the edges tucked under the cork boards)  

and to hang them, I sandwiched ribbon between the cork boards and foam core backing with extra glue...

voila.

Oh, but wait! We need two...

Ok repeat the process, and.... there.

Two custom memo boards, and two happy girli-o's.

Now what was I doing before they conned me into this endeavor?