French memo boards

I did finally get to make my napkin rings, which has dispelled the napkin ring fever (for the time being at least) but the pictures of them are still on my sister's camera which is with her in Arizona, so I will have to share those another day.

For now, here is another one of the projects that I made to give as Christmas presents. These are really simple and pretty and a great way to display pictures and many other things.

To make these french memo boards you need:

• a canvas (I got mine for around $3 at Job Lot)
• batting
• fabric
• a staple gun or stapler
• ribbon
• jumbo brads (beads or buttons work too)
• poster board
• sawtooth picture hangers

Cut a rectangle of batting that is the same size as your canvas. I used more than one layer because my batting was very thin. Cut a rectangle out of your fabric that is big enough to cover the front of your canvas and overlap the sides by 1-2 inches.
Lay your batting on top of your canvas and center the fabric on top. Flip the whole pile over and use your staple gun to staple the fabric to the back of the canvas. You want it to be a little tight, so when you are stapling the last three sides tug the fabric taught and then staple.

Now take the ribbon and staple the end of it to the corner of your canvas so that it will go straight across the edge of the corner.

Then stretch it across to the other corner, pulling it so that it will be tight enough to hold the pictures and things it will be displaying. Staple the ribbon on the back of the opposite corner and cut it from the spool leaving just a little extra. Now do the same thing with the other two corners.

Keep adding ribbons in both directions until you are satisfied with the amount of ribbons on the board. Try to keep approximately the same amount of space between each pair of parallel ribbons so that the diamonds formed by the overlapping ribbons will be almost the same size.
When you are stapling on the rest of the ribbons make sure you staple them to the side edge of the canvas and then to the bottom so that they stay in place.

Once you've stapled the ribbons to the side you can fold the excess over to the back of the canvas and staple the ends down so they stay out of the way.
 

 
Use Scissors to poke a hole through one of the x's made by two ribbons overlapping and all the way through the canvas. Put a brad through the hole and fasten it. For some of the other memo boards I made, I covered the brads with fabric to make them match (actually my mom did it for me). On another one I sewed on fake pearl beads in place of the brads. 
Now take your poster board and cut a rectangle of the same dimensions as your canvas. Staple it to the back of the canvas to cover up all the fabric and ribbon ends. Then attach a sawtooth picture hanger in the middle of both a long side and a short side.

 All done!