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The Story:

My thrifting husband found this giant art clipboard at our local university surplus sale (for $1!) and brought it home for me.  He knew I’d love it and that I’d be able to come up with a use for it.  (He’s always bringing home little treasures for me.  Love that man!) 

I’ve been wanting a simple, attractive way to display the multitude of kid art (and, let’s face it, Mommy art) that makes its way into our home.  Pinterest is full of all sorts of fun ideas, but none of them seemed just right.  When this baby entered my life, I knew just what I wanted to make from it: A mod-podged, book page-covered, kid art display board! 

The Project:

It took two episodes of Chuck and several dozen book pages to cover the board.  

I then hot-glued clothespins to the board to add 4 additional clips for hanging masterpieces.  I painted the clothespins off-white, let everything dry and that was that.  All in all, this project cost $1 because I already had all the supplies except the board itself.

This new board now hangs in the space where our piano used to be, along with some abstract art by yours truly.  I added a recently-thrifted chair (the blue one) and a newly painted, much-used chair we’ve had for years (it was given to us by my Grandpa when he retired from his medical practice and was used for years and years in the waiting room of his office).

A little advice for book page crafts:

I do have one piece of advice for any book page craft: choose a book you are comfortable with displaying in your home.  The book I chose to use was an old horror-ish novel.  I certainly didn’t want to read it, and I’m not even sure why we owned it in the first place.  Every once in a while, while I was mod-podging the pages on, a nasty word or a terrifying phrase would catch my eye (you know, something about dismembered eyeballs floating in a murky solution.  Yes, really.).  I tried to get rid of all the inappropriate pages, but there may be some unacceptable stuff I missed.  Just hanging there on the wall in our home. It makes me nervous.