What you need:

Lots of corrugated cardboard!

Pens and pencils

A large piece of white card (as big as you want your board to be) – optional

PVA Glute

Stanley knife or sharp scissors

1 M of covering fabric (patterned or plain)

1 M of fleece or wadding

6M bias binding/ribbon/material strips for the criss-crossing

Decorations for the front

Lots of dress making pins (get a pack, just to be on the safe side!)

A stapler and extra staples

First up you’ll need some cardboard… this is where all you eco-warriors can get involved and save the planet, and where you not-so-eco, but compulsively collecting cardboard fanatics can also finally have a use for all that card that let’s face it, you’re not going to do anything with… until now! (Does anyone else have lots of boxes they seem to save ‘just in case’? Well… this is your Just In Case moment, it’s finally here (OH’s up and down the country will be rejoicing, mums and dads will finally have space in their garage, or maybe, you can stop climbing over boxes to get to things? Some people do this…) PS. Make sure it’s the firm, corrugated stuff! None of this cereal box madness!

 So, open out one of your many boxes and either free-hand draw a heart onto the box or, print one off, blow-it up BIG on the photocopier (make it at least A3) and trace around it. Do one half at a time if you’re going free-hand, just so you have something to copy!

 Then outline the heart in a marker, so you can see it when you’re cutting.

 Repeat the first two steps for the other half.

 Take a stanley knife and cut out the shape. Make sure you put a cutting mat underneath or you will cut the table or carpet (in my case carpet, before I remembered that in fact, I do live in a house of craft supplies and that we have multiple craft boards/mats/items for cutting things on lying around… I even spotted one in the garage in the rafters yesterday! Who does that?! Apparently, we do!)

 Repeat those steps three or four times, until you have several layers of hearts… aww (or not, if your hand has now gone all pins-and-needly from cutting the card like mine did)!

 Next spread a layer of PVA on the bottom heart shape and press another one of the heart shapes onto it. Repeat until you have three or four layers of corrugated card all glued together.

 Like this!

 Then take some white card (a big sheet!) or lots of pieces of white paper and back the board. This is for aesthetics… don’t worry too much about this though, it’s a good idea if you want to give the board as a gift as it will look smarter than just having the corrugated card (who knows where you got your card from? I really don’t think it’s everyone’s taste to have ‘Amazon’ or ‘Staples‘ or other shop of choice branded across the back of your board!)

  Now lay flat the piece of material you want to use to cover your board. This needs to be two inches bigger than the board as you need to have enough excess to pull over to the back!

Then lay a piece of wadding or a doubled over old fleece blanket (or jumper… whatever you have that you can use, but don’t use it if it’s actually in use as a jumper or blanket!!) on top of the ‘covering’ piece of material. It needs to be half an inch smaller than the front ‘covering’ material.

Then make a kind of material and cardboard sandwich (yum…!) like this:

1. Covering material on the bottom, with the pattern (if you’ve chosen a pattern) facing down.
2. Fleece or wadding next, making sure there is half an inch of the covering material all the way round.
3. Cardboard heart in the center.

This is the step I missed out the pictures for, but if you go to my how to make a square pin board page, then you’ll see what I’m talking about! Click here for the link…

 Finally, you should have something like this as the front of your board.

 Now cut strips of ribbon, binding or whatever you want to use to criss-cross over your board and lay them down, pull taught then staple down to the back.

 Work your way across the heart shape one way, and then go back across the other way. Be careful not to pull the strips of material to tight or you’ll get a puckered effect around the edge, but also, don’t make it too loose or you’ll not be able to wedge anything in the criss crosses!

Here’s how the heart should look as you’re criss-crossing!

 And this is the finished result!

 Now go around the edge and staple the material down at the point where the strips of material fold over the edge. This just adds an extra security to the material staying put and not unravelling on you!

 Stick pins at an angle (so you don’t go through the back!) through the middle of the crossing point. I tried out different pins, but the best ones were dress making pins as they really secured all of the fabrics. Drawing pins weren’t long enough to go through all the layers.

 Make sure you drive the pins through at an angle as they are longer than drawing pins, so they may stick through the back!

 These are the decorations I chose to use to cover up the pins. They have a double-sided sticky pad on the back, so are ideal for attaching to the material.

 Stick on of your decorations onto each crossover point, and you’re finished!

 Here’s the finished result. Feel free to add a picture hook to the back, or maybe a stand to keep it up right. Another alternative is to attach a piece of string or wire onto the back to hang the pin board onto a picture hook on the wall (I think I’m going to go for the last option!)

Enjoy making!

Rubelle’s Moon