Monday, December 10, 2012

Menu Board - I Finally Made a Pinterest Project!

Like seemingly everyone else, I am on Pinterest. While I have pinned many things, I am not completely consumed with spending hours upon hours a day finding new recipes and craft ideas that I'll never get around to trying. That being said, I have found some things that I really do want to make my own version of, and this menu board is one of them.
 
The project was originally posted on Heartland Paper quite some time ago. My first thought was to order a kit (mostly because I wanted to check out the magnetic board and get dimensions), but that's when I found out it was a fairly old post and the kits were no longer available. Therefore, I put my problem-solving skills to the test.
 
My hubby happens to be an iron worker and frequently brings home odds and ends from job sites. I called him one day to see if he had access to scrap sheet metal, and sure enough, he did. I made a guess as to the size I needed, and just like that he brought me home 12 pieces cut to size with nice clean edges. Magnetic board issue solved! (Many thanks to the "tinner" who did the cutting.)
 
When I chose the dimensions for the sheet metal I based them on the idea that I would actually put the sheet metal in a frame to make it easy to hang. I soon discovered the downside to doing that was that to get inexpensive 11x14" frames, you don't get the best quality, and the sheet metal didn't fit in the frames as nicely as the glass that came with them did. I thought about it some more.
 
I turned to my husband one more time asking him if he could drill holes in the sheet metal for me. All he needed to know was what size. He drilled the holes, ground off the rough edges around them, and I was officially ready to tackle the paper part of the project.
 
I love Close to My Heart's desk pads. I use one for nearly every project. I got out a new sheet, grabbed my ruler and my purple Sharpie, and set to figuring out paper dimensions. I quickly learned that my board was wider and shorter than the one from the original project. However, I knew I could make it work and adapted accordingly.
 
In the end I had a project I was really happy with and thoroughly enjoyed making. It was my first, but it won't be my last!

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