DIY: How to Make a Corkboard Jewelry Frame

A few months back, while cat-sitting for my gal Joanna, I noticed she had taken an ornate, pretty, little frame and added mesh screening to it.  Behold, a quick and easy earring holder!  I became quickly obsessed with the idea, wanting something larger to store my massive collection of necklaces.

While on a work errand, I came across a stunning and slightly gaudy gilded frame at Michael’s, on clearance for $19.99, maybe $29.99. It came home with me and has sat for the last few months.  That is, until the charming Ainsley Hayes managed to get on the mantle with my jewelry, knocking it all over the place.  At that point, I decided some organization & structure was needed (and I STILL can’t find my favorite earrings).

What You’ll Need:

• A frame of your liking.
• Cork board, or a bulletin board. I recommend trying to buy them similar sizes, or very close in size.
• Hot glue gun & wood glue
• Sharpie (or dark marker/pen)
• Measuring tool (I used a ruler & measuring tape)
• Box cutter
• A variety of pushpins

Total time: an hour (including organizing your jewelry!)

This is such a ridiculously easy project to do, I wish I had done it sooner.

I chose a bulletin board with a plastic frame, as opposed to a wooden frame, because I realized it would be easier to take off.  The frame snaps apart easily enough, though the two longer strips were stapled to the innards– so I had to pull those a bit.  If you pick up one with a wooden frame, you’re likely going to need a screwdriver and hammer to get them off.

Underneath the frame– the guts.  It actually ended up being 2 pieces of cardboard, plus a fine layer of cork.  While this doesn’t create a stronger & sturdier corkboard, it’s sufficient and made the whole project much simpler.

As I mentioned, my bulletin board was too big for my frame.  So I used the above to carefully mark out where I’d cut it.  Despite measuring and marking, it still ended up too big, so I had to (very roughly) trim it down further.  Because of the cardboard layers and thin cork sheeting, it was VERY easy to cut with a box cutter!  If it had been a thick layer of cork, I may have had to saw it down.

Once the cork fit in to the frame, I put a thick layer of hot glue along the two shortest ends on the inner lip.  Because hot glue takes a while to get out of the gun and dries quickly, I focused on doing two sides and not trying to glue around the whole frame.  This created a pretty strong bond, and you can’t see it trying to fall out.

After the hot glue was in, I pinched the boards against the frame to make sure they were receiving enough pressure to secure themselves together and begin to cool (probably for about a minute).

And that’s it! Super quick and easy, and looks much neater than having bags and boxes of necklaces piled up.  I chose oversized push pins to hold the necklaces, while choosing smaller wooden pushpins to hold earrings.