Pretty and Practical. A work in progress!

I love practical things. L-O-V-E them. Well-made and useful items make me drool. The year I got a Swiss Army knife for Christmas, I peed myself a little. It's in my blood to adore good craftsmanship. My Pappy, my grandpappy, my great grandpappy, they all believed in it and craved it like our Superpup craves superpup cookies. What's even better than things that are practical and of good quality? Things that are well-made, practical, and beautiful. Observe:

via

Not to say that you can't have just one of the three, but I tend to roll this way.
Perfect example: back before I met Mr. Wonderful, I had a four poster bed from Ikea that I absolutely loved. Actually, John and Sherry from Young House Love have the same bed. Not only was it lovely, but it was perfect for hanging my unmentionables to dry. One night as I was coming home from a party, I took off my necklace and had the uncontrollable urge to hook it over one of the bars up top. I liked the effect so much that I put the rest of my necklace collection up there where it stayed until Mr. Wonderful and I moved in together and the bed had to go *tear. It was quite the menagerie:

I loved that it provided the opportunity for the collection to be displayed since truth be told even though I really love necklaces, I don't wear them very often. I love the look of them, and I'm not going to stop having them so I wanted to be able to enjoy them all the time. It truly was the perfect solution.
When Mr. Wonderful and I moved into our apartment, I wanted to keep my collection out where it could be seen. The absence of a four poster bed consequently did not deter me, and I opted to hang each one up on a wall in our new bedroom using push pins. Looooooooots of push pins. I wish I'd taken pictures but I'm terrible at that, so I'm going to trust you to use your imagination. When we bought our house I wanted to re-invent the effect since the last incarnation involved us using a lot of spackle when we moved out. The other night while I was halfway to dreamland it came to me: frame them. Literally.
The plan was to go to Michael's, buy a canvas frame that painters use, and use some of the left over muslin from my last project, to stretch over it, and hang the necklaces on it using pins.
As it turned out, fate had a better idea.
As I was wandering around the framing aisle with Mr. Wonderful, leaning up against an odd corner I saw the most amazing thing....a corkboard! Not just any corkboard. A BIG corkboard.

You can't tell, but I'm really excited in this picture. *Sigh* I need to get me a mask.

We took it up to the register to check out while I pulled out my 50% off one regularly priced item coupon, tallying up a budget in my head. The kind lady behind the register scanned it and......it came up at $.01. Wow....one cent? Awesome. Knowing it wouldn't last, I basked in the fantasy of plopping down a penny and saying things like "Here you are my good woman. Much obliged" but of course as fantasies go it was not to be. She called over the nice kid with the stocking gun and took another scan as I waited to find out what it was going to set us back.

"Okay......um.....well, this is on clearance, 80% off the sale price so....."

The register sang, and spittled, and spit it out.

$6.44 with tax.

All the way home, I kept turning to Mr. Wonderful and saying "$6.44, man. $6.44!" It's also possible that I uttered a casual profanity, but that I will neither confirm nor deny. Needless to say, I was excited.

When we got home, I grabbed my staple gun, aka Maxwell. Max came to us when I first became interested in upholstery, something that will be on this blog a lot, I imagine. My first step was to staple just underneath the frame of the corkboard at the back.

My original plan was to staple the frame itself in the back, but the wood was too hard to do that and the staples stuck out too far. I wanted it to work and was a bit stuboorn at first, but finally conceded it probably wasn't the best idea, removed the half sticking out staples, and moved down further.

Then I turned the board over so the bottom was at the top, pulled on the fabric to stretch it, and stapled again.

I moved on to the next side, and the next, pulling and stapling as I went. I stopped to check the front every now and again to be sure it was getting to be evenly taut.

I don't know why, but this step was oddly statisfying. Must have been the muslin *love*

Once I was done, I trimmed off the excess (sorry about the blurry picture...I promise I'll get better).

And this is what I was left with:

Time to add the artpieces necklaces!

I had help of course. This is my supervisor in charge of symmetry.

Voila.

It's a good start, but I don't think it's quite done. I want to add framing around it once I can get my hands on a miter saw and some crown moulding. But then again, maybe I'll hang it up in our bedroom and discover that it works with our motif! Of course, that would mean that first it would need a motif. I should probably get started on that...