Rustic DIY Clipboards

Hello, again!  It’s Sarah and I’m back from Making Joy and Pretty Things to share a fun new project with y’all today – Rustic DIY Clipboards!

I’ve been working on a few DIYs to help make my craft space a little more functional.  I posted a few photos over on Instagram showing progress, but haven’t gotten any full DIYs up on the blog just yet.

Just to give you an idea, my husband built a cute little craft desk for me.  Or, maybe for him so my crafting supplies and projects would make only make a mess in my space and perhaps not on the dining room table anymore 🙂

Whatever my husband’s motivation may have been, I now have a wonderful new craft space.  But, it rests against a bare wall.  And the obsessive decorator in me just couldn’t look at a bare wall.

The first project I finished was a DIY Memo Board.   SO easy to make, and the perfect focal point for the area.

I am SO excited to finish the second project: the rustic clipboards!  They sit right above my desk and are not only cute (and rustic, of course) but extremely functional.

I started with a piece of pine wood I had sitting around and cut into two clipboards measuring 9 1/2″ tall by roughly 7 1/4″ wide.

I just wanted them to be stained and painted, but my husband insisted upon using a router to make the edges all “cool” (aka round the edges).

Okay, fine.  I admit, it does look pretty neat.  However, this isn’t a necessary step.  I love the idea of keeping the roughly squared edges of the wood as well.

Next, I stained the wood using Rustoleum Wood Stain in Old American.

I then used Rustoleum Chalked Paint in Linen White to paint over the stain once it had dried.  I started using a paint brush, but the lines were too visible from each stroke.  So, I switched to a mini foam roller, which worked perfectly!

After the paint dried, I used some extra coarse sandpaper to distress the clipboards.  I like to focus on any edges and creating a few rough patches over the flat surface.

Next, it was on to the clips!  I picked up these clipboard clips from Michaels, though I really thought these ones were really fun, too.

My husband attached the clips about 1/4″ from the top of the clipboard using #8 1/2in hex head sheet metal screws.  Uhhh, what??  Since we have a mini hardware store in our basement, we were able to find screws that fit the width of the wood and also had a white tip that I thought looked better than a regular silver screw.

Please don’t worry about finding that exact screw.  Something that matches the color of the clip and doesn’t poke through the back of the wood will work just fine.

Lastly, I decided to make some felt flowers for the clipboards, just for a fun touch.  I didn’t invent these flowers, and there are probably tons of tutorials explaining how to make them.  But, I’m going to share mine anyway 🙂

Start by cutting a circle out of the felt.  The bigger the circle, the bigger the flower.  I set this circle by the scissors so you can get an idea for size.

Start at one point, and begin cutting in a circular motion just inside the outer edge.  If you just keep cutting in a circle always making sure to cut further inside the circle each time, you eventually end up with this:

Take the first little part you started cutting and hold in between two fingers.  Then, you will wrap the remaining felt around that point continuously until you’re done!  Each little loop you make around is basically where the petals would be.

Finally, I made a few of these felt flowers and used my glued gun to stick them to the bottom corners of the clipboards.

I LOVE how they turned out.  The perfect rustic and farmhouse look I adore, while also being functional in my craft space.

Who doesn’t need a little motivation to get your work done 😉

Eeek!! This is the whole craft space right now!!  I promise to post the other two projects (plus one yet to be completed) on my blog soon!

That’s all for today, friends!!  I hope you love the clipboards as much as I do.

Wishing you a joyful day!