In our kitchen we have a cork board near our computer to hold miscelaneous items like old receipts, coupons, post cards, etc. I found it during my first ever visit to HomeGoods back when Derek and I first started dating. It had a fun textural frame that I had planned on painting, but just never got around to it.

Yes I probably should have straightened up before taking photos, but our apartment is a wedding frenzie right now so there really is no point. See those styrofoam rings in the back of the dining room? Yep. Those are for centerpieces. Wanna help? ;)

I wasn’t sure what color to paint it. At first I was leaning toward a high gloss black, but I thought that might be a little aggressive against our bold stenciled dining room wall. And I remembered that I had already purchased a pot of high gloss mint to use on my vanity table [that I clearly haven't gotten around to yet]. I’ve been a little nervous about how glossy this paint would really be so I figured this would be the perfect project to test it out on.

This was a custom color I had mixed up using a high gloss enamel. It’s a lot more expensive then your premixed pots, but a LOT glossier too. So when you want to go for that oil based paint look without the ridiculous clean up, this is where it’s at! Since I knew that I had planned on covering the cork portion of the board with fabric, I didn’t bother taping off the edges of the frame.

Since my frame was extremely textured, my first coat was to dig into all of the crevices, while my second coat was to help even out the brush strokes for a nice smooth glassy finish. This whole project took about an hour, most of which was dry time, and Derek was there for moral support watching a Firefly marathon.

 While the second coat of paint was drying, I went ahead and started working on the fabric part. I had bought this dalmatian print  a few months back to use as a runner in my dining room when I still had to plan for the gold striped wall [boo]. So since it was just collecting dust I decided to use it on this project.

You could definitely remove the cork from the frame to wrap it with fabric, but my cork board was museum mounted on the back so there was no getting in there without completely destroying it. That being said, I had to get a little crafty. I measured the cork portion of the board to be 25.5″ x 35.5″ so I cut my piece of fabric down to 27.5″ x 37.5″ so that I could fold down 1″ of fabric on each side and iron them to create a nice seam all around.

Once all sides were ironed, I placed it on my cork and stapled each side down as close to the frame as possible, with a staple gun.

I worked from top to bottom then left to right, to ensure that my fabric was nice and taught. Because the pattern was so busy it hid my staples nicely. So after about 40 or so staples we were in business!

I just love how subtle the mint really is, and these photos don’t do it justice but that paint is ga-lossy! Just like I like it. And yes those ARE our wedding colors pinned up there on the left. What can I say? It’s crunch time and those colors are being used to match everything right now. Did you have any quick little weekend projects?