I’ve had a lot of questions about the mechanics of blogging lately so I’ve decided to make a series of posts with tips on setting up a productive blogging space ^_^

Part 1- Tutorial on making an inspiration board

Part 2- Tutorial on decorating a mirror and lamp

Part 3- Putting it all together and what else do you need?

So today is

Part 1- Making an Inspiration Board

What you need:

-An old cork board, I stole mine from James
-Enough cute fabric to cover it
-Lots of ribbon
-Bows
-Lots of different kinds of lace
-Old brand bags (you know the ones that Lolita brands give out with cute designs?)
-Glue gun
-White paint
-Scissors
-Orange stick (optional)

So first thing’s first, gather all of your materials..

Cut out a rectangle of fabric big enough to cover the whole thing.

Take it outside and paint the frame white. If you use white acrylic like I did, you’ll probably need a couple of coats. Make sure it’s completely dry before you go on to the next step…

Now there are two ways to do this next step depending on how you plan on decorating the frame part. What you want to do is cover the cork part of the board with your fabric. If you think you’re going to cover the edge with lace the the easiest way is just to hot glue it in place along the edge. If you think that this part will be visible then grab your orange stick and start poking the fabric into the frame. It is probably quite a tight fit but if you use the pointy end of the stick you should be able to force your way around the edges.

You should end up with something like this…

Now get your ribbon and mark out diagonal point on the frame, make sure they are all even, use a ruler if you have to because if you’re anything like me, having uneven ribbons at the end will annoy you every time you look at it!

Do the same thing in the other direction. You should use your glue gun to stick each end to the edge of the fabric and poke the edges under.

Now get a bunch of little ribbon bows!

Glue them where the ribbons overlap and glue that point to the fabric too. Basically you create a kind of grid ^_^

Now time for lace

It’s a good idea to lay out your lace before you glue it to make sure that you have enough and it look good. I decided to use ruffled cotton lace on the inside edge because it reminded me of a pretty shop window.

Now let’s fill it with things that inspire us! You know all of the plastic bags you get when you make a purchase from a Lolita brand, I’ve always thought that the designs were too pretty to throw away but I could never think of something to do with them. Until now I just stored them in a cupboard but that just seems like a waste!

So get all of your pretty bags and cut out the designs! You can find cute designs in the strangest places, this one was from some underwear store but it had flowers and actually said “Lolita” on it. I don’t know what your chances are for finding one that says “Hime Gyaru” though

You can decorate the bits you cut out too, I added some diamantes

Now pop them in your frame! You can see here that when I was doing this I forgot to glue all the bows to the fabric, this is a problem because when you hang it up there is nothing to keep the pictures up! I fixed it up later so you can see the completely finished version in part 3 ^_^

So there you have it!

There will be lots more pictures in the next post of this series so check back again for the next installment!

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