DIY Easy Custom Bulletin Board

I’m still working on my home office which I’m sure will be an ongoing process. One of the things I really needed was a place to tack up my notes. Little reminders, special numbers like my hex numbers, checklists etc. Currently I have been hanging papers on the wall with washi tape in front of my computer. Though I’m glad I found a use for the washi tape, as it has become somewhat of an impulse buy, however, it looks pretty bad. So I set out to make a bulletin board. One that would fit in this space so it needed to be short in height and long in width. Something around 12 inches high and 3 to 4 feet wide. Ready made bulletin boards are typically not that size, so I set out to make one. Here’s the tutorial for my DIY easy custom bulletin board.

The Materials

Con-Tact Drawer Liner
Poster Frame
Stencil
Spray Paint

Right away I knew I wanted to use cork board. I found this great shelf liner from Con-Tact. It’s really thin so I needed something behind it.

Originally I thought about foam board but then I was wondering how to hang it and came across a great poster frame which was just about the right size (11.75 by 36 inches). The frame just pulls off the backing. There’s a plastic cover and a cardboard back. So I cut the liner to fit the cardboard and stored the cover for a future project.

Once you cut the cork liner you can easily peel off the paper and unroll it onto the cardboard.

I wanted to pretty it up, even if I filled it up with papers and ideas so I decided to stencil the cork. I’m not the best at stenciling so I taped off areas with newspaper and used spray paint.

As you can see, some spots look better than others. At first I sprayed back and forth but that tended to bleed under the stencil, so I tried  short spurts of paint directly above the stencil and that worked great. I moved the stencil around with my hand, (yes, it was messy), and since I was working with the short sprays I didn’t worry about re-taping or moving the newspaper. However, I did work in the garage with paper underneath, and the door open for ventilation.

This poster frame has only one hanger in the middle so I used two adhesive hangers on each side to keep it stable. Poster tack would work well too.

I love the look of these cute little Black Map Pins. They work great especially since the board is not very thick.

I’m happy with the end result. It fits perfectly in the area, and looks a whole lot nicer than papers hung with washi tape.