It's Craft Time - Kitchen Erase Board

I've been wanting either a chalkboard or a white erase board in my kitchen. I thought the chalkboard would be dusty and worried about grease and I thought standard white erase boards are ugly. What to do, what to do. Why I made my own dry erase board, of course! It was easy peasy and pretty thrifty.

I started with a beautiful picture in a gorgeous frame that for some unexplained reason was drastically clearanced at Joann Fabrics to the princely sum of $9.99 (and of course I then used my 40% off coupon). It was very pretty with multiple levels of mat adding a lot of depth and a fantastic gold and silver with a little black flecked wide frame. For my purposes I only cared about the frame, and it was nice and big and just the perfect size for my 24 inches of  free wall space in my kitchen. I was a little worried. I had seen similar projects in blogland and they always use frames with glass and mine was plastic. Turned out my dry erase markers work just fine on plastic. (Yes, you just write on the glass/plastic. Like magic - it's a dry erase board!)

I picked out some great fabric at a quilt store. I wanted something with a subtle pattern but was still neutral enough to fit into my kitchen. Most importantly it had to be easy to read what was written on the front. I thought about burlap, but wanted something different. I bought more fabric than I needed for the project (hmmm.... Freudian slip?) and don't remember what the fabric cost - but lets just call it $4 for the fabric. It's in the ballpark. Oh! Don't forget to iron your fabric.

So now the easy part. I took the paper on the back of the frame off and pried up the little tabs that held the one piece picture and mat in. I then wrapped the cardboard back of the picture with fabric. Except like a dork I first wrapped the picture side and couldn't figure out how I would stop the pictures from showing through the fabric. Just a little brain fog. I flipped the picture over and wrapped the BACK cardboard side with fabric and taped it on the FRONT of the picture. Much better. I used just regular packing tape, but duct tape would also work if it was handy. You just need it to hold until you get the frame reassembled.

We're now on the kitchen floor. I move around a lot when crafting since space is limited. Wash the plastic (or glass) and put the picture back together.

Ta-da! The fabric print is really subtle in these pictures. It shows up a bit more in person. It looks beautiful with my milk chocolate walls, stainless steel appliances and cherry and black cabinets. Too bad I can't get that into the picture. My kitchen is small and my back was up against the opposite wall as I took this picture.

Total cost $10-ish (I'm getting better at remembering to take pictures. Now I need to remember to save my receipts). Except for the fabric shopping (which was really fun) I think it took me longer to iron the fabric the it did to make the project -- 15 minutes tops even with my little taping mix-up.