Making a Prayer Board

We are a family that prays. And we tend to write down prayer requests from others in lots of random places - in my journal, in the notes section on my phone, try to stash it in our head... But we decided that we needed to put these all in one place so that we could see them daily.

I threw around a lot of different ideas - a chalkboard, a whiteboard, a magnetic board... But then I remembered something that we already had (much the same way I remembered the room divider that we repurposed into our headboard). I doubted the decision to use this memo board because it would involve the use of paper... lots of paper. But then I though of the perks of that. We could spin around a prayer request and make it a praise. So, I started to transform an old gift that use to match my decor, but no longer does.

As you can see, this is a premade board. First, I looked at how it was held together and discovered it was just some light, tacky glue that held it together. I removed the hardware and carefully pulled off the back (which wasn't that difficult at all).

 Then, I carefully pulled off the fabric and the ribbons. The ribbons were attached with one quick stitch to the plaid fabric. A quick snip and the points came apart. But both of them were just held to the back with light tacky glue. Easy-peasy to pull off. I was very careful to keep the ribbon straight so that I wouldn't have to remeasure or anything like that to attach it back to my refinished board.

I ditched the red and black plaid fabric and kept the ribbon laid out on the back of the board.

Then, I pulled out the burlap we had for our wedding (you can take a peak at some of those photos here), got my hot glue gun and some scissors to cut that burlap to size. You can see  that nice foam and the cork board like board that it lays atop, now free from plaid fabric.



 Then, I realized I would be burning my fingers over and over because the burlap has those tiny holes... So I grabbed my stapler.

I stapled all the way around, pulling the burlap taut. I didn't worry too much about any ripples I saw because I knew when I hot glued the back on, those babies would be tucked away.

 Then, I moved the board on top of the ribbons, lined it up, and began hot gluing the ribbons in place.

Then, the back of the board went in place, and the hardware was screwed back in.

When I flipped it over, I saw that the ribbons weren't completely symmetrical, but after taking a peak at my before shot, I saw that before this was hidden by the plaid pattern on the fabric. I wasn't too worried or concerned about it to reglue the ribbons. 

Then, I pulled out my trust Cricut, some pretty paper that I thought would look good in our bedroom, and picked the Gypsy font. I glued my letters to the paper and then glued the paper to the top of the board. 

Above, you can see strands of twine peeking out from under the books holding down the paper to the board to make sure it glued well. I put that twine between the board and the paper and tied to to a ribbon, just so that there was something rough (and with tooth) that the glue could help the paper stick to.

What do ya think?? This design enables us to add just random pieces of paper that we may write praises and prayers on with ease. It is also covering our breaker box. We like it.