DIY Art Display Board

We've seriously needed to get stuff up on our walls for a while.  We never hung pictures on our walls in our last house because we knew hoped we would only be there a few months, but we're in this rental for the long haul (until we find the right house to buy or build...either which may take a while) and I want to make it feel more like home.  I also think the stuff you put on your walls tells visitors something about your priorities and what's important to you.  We also need a place to display stuff the kids make.  The refridgerator just doesn't work for us because Sweet Pea pulls of anything in her reach, so there's not a lot of usable space there.

Enter this handy display board my mom made for us a couple years ago as a gift.  It was an awesome gift Mom!  Thanks! But I'm a bit embarrassed to show you it got a bit dirty in the move.  Also, the original color also matched our current walls a bit to well, so I thought I'd update it a bit and give it the honor of the first thing hung on our walls with a nail!  And I was able to do it without using a Cricut machine or vinyl...just mod podge and scrapbook paper.

Even if you don't have one of these to update, you can easily make your own with just a board, some giant clips, a few screws and some hangers for the back.

Here is what I did:

1. Took the clips off and saved them and the screws holding them. 

2.  Filled in the screw holes with wood putty.

3.  Sanded it with my little electric sander.  (It's so worth the money if you have more than one or two woodworking projects you plan on doing.)

4.  Painted it with primer.

5.  Painted it with two coats of glossy red acrylic craft paint.
6.  Traced my letters BACKWARDS onto the back of some scrapbook paper and cut them out carefully.  (If you have a CriCut or similar machine, you could do that too.)
7.  Used painter's tape to make a straight line for lining up my letters and to give me a surface to put marks on to help with spacing the letters.

8.  "Painted" the back of the letters with a light coating of Mod Podge and placed them on the board.

9.  Coated the whole board with Mod Podge to give it a consistent shine.

10.  Screwed the clips back on, but spaced out a bit more to make room for larger pieces of artwork.