Make over boring cork boards!

Today I'm going to show you step by step how I went from the ugly, stained cork boards above (from the thrift store, of course!) to the fun, bright wall art below:

I started by spray painting the whole cork board with white spray paint. I was not careful about sanding or cleaning off the wood like Hilary, and I probably should have been, because it took me twice as long to paint as it should have...mostly because I kept having to wipe away dust in the middle of painting...

...but I finally got it all white and pretty! There was some speculation between Hilary and I about whether or not the cork would be able to hold paint, or if it would simply absorb the paint and need six coats. It turns our that cork can be painted effectively! And it only took two coats to get it fully covered:

Once I had let them dry for six hours or so, I covered the cork board by layering newspaper and brown packaging paper over it, then taping it down with painter's tape. I left the white frames exposed:

I then sprayed the frames turquoise, using about two coats to fully cover the white. Also, look! You can totally see my toes in this picture:

The designs on the frames were made using Sharpie paint pens from the hardware store. I used orange and lime green:

I just free-handed the design of the green lines on the larger cork board (which of course didn't show up on camera, boo) and the orange polka dots on the smaller board. I both love and hate how this turned out. I'm a perfectionist and these aren't perfect, identical dots by any stretch of the imagination. But I do kind of love how they look fun and wonky. I think it works in a playroom setting.

I chose these colors to match the tissue paper poofs that we already have hanging in the room. These poofs are left over from our boy's first birthday party! Can you believe they've held up so well? We showed you how to make your own when we threw their monster-themed party in march.

Here's the final pic of the large board, hanging in our playroom. The light in that room isn't great, so please excuse the sub-par picture:

The letters above the larger board were a stroke of genius. I have a tutorial for this super easy and fun kid's craft coming up soon!

And here's the small, polka-dotted board:

The smaller signs were just some polka dotted cardboard scraps that I free-handed words onto and let the girls color. I wasn't even careful cutting it out, so they're really uneven around the edges, but the kids really got a kick out of being a part of the creative process for the artwork in the playroom:

These aren't perfect, I didn't follow all of the careful steps like Hilary did when she spray painted her shadowbox, but I think for a play room the slightly wonky cork boards are a fun touch. And now the kids have a place to put their own artwork on the walls, and not on my refrigerator door!

~Jessica