There is a very slight possibility that I own too much..stuff. I am a collector. A hoarder. A lover of things. Especially little tiny cute things. As a a general rule, I am rather untidy because I like to be able to see all my things at a given time. How, after all, do I know that I would like to wear my dachshund brooch when it is tucked away in a box and I cannot remember that I own it??

Earrings and necklaces are no problem, as they are stored safely on my duck-egg blue treeling, but at Christmas, when I found myself in possession of 3 new pins/brooches (more on that to come), I realised that my current brooch storage algorithm ('on the hallway table') was somewhat outmoded.

An idea sprouted....

Brooch board for the storage of ephemera

Step 1. You must start with some nice fabrics. Preferably with small animals printed on them. You also need a piece of styrofoam as big as you would like your finished board to be. In the post-Christmas period, this is easier to come by that you might think...Cut some patches of the fabric, making them big enough to accommodate both a small seam allowance (I used a quarter inch allowance to sew my pieces together), and about a 5cm overhang to fold over the edges. Alternatively, you could use a single piece of fabric which is as big as the piece of foam, plus the 5cm overhang.

Step 2. Sew the patches together to make a single piece of fabric. I had 4 patches and sewed them horizontally first, to make 2 bigger pieces. Then vertically, to make one single big piece. Allow to be illustrate my shitty instructions pictorially...




Step 2b. Make sure to iron the seams flat, and ensure that when you are sewing over them that you sew them open, rather than letting them bunch up.

Step 3. Stretch the fabric out over the piece of foam then fold the edges over to the back. Glue them down with hot glue. I love hot glue guns, pow pow pow.
Then artistically place some ribbon criss-crossed over the front. Pin it in place on the front, then glue it on the back. At this point, I took a piece of hard plastic that I had from a photo frame, and stuck it on the back to cover up all my glue and rough edges. You could use cardboard or something (my piece of foam was cut to the size of the plastic).

Stick it on the wall with some 3M strips, then stick it full of brooches and pins.


Marvel as your beloved stops complaining that it's impossible to find the mail amongst the shit on the table, and thank me later. x