Wine Charm Display How To

The summer craft show season is nearly upon us, and I've been thinking of ways to better display my wine charms, particularly the alphabet charms. I've them in cute little bowls (a hassle to find letters when they're all bunched together), I've separated them a plastic container so they're easy to find (but not as attractive as I'd like and people don't seem to like having to bend over to look at them all), so now I'm trying an upright display.

I couldn't find any pre-made, so I decided to make my own. I did a few searches online for jewelry displays and decided to try something with cork board. Although all the how to's were very nice, they didn't meet all of my criteria for an outdoor show. First, I wasn't hanging this on a wall, so it so it had to be sturdy enough to stand up by itself. I also wanted some kind of frame. Second, using cute tacks or hooks weren't going to do me any good if a gust of wind came up and blew everything down. Whatever I hung on the board had to be secure and stay on the board.

I did some recon at Michael's during a recent 40% off sale and found most of what I needed. I supplemented the essentials with a quick stop at my local quilt shop and Ace Hardware store.

1. 11x14 piece of cork board - Michael's
2. 11x14 simple frame - Michael's
3. 1 square yard of white cotton (I didn't need it all, but I wanted enough in case I messed up) - Quilt Shop
4. 3 pkgs of 5/8 eye screws - Ace

I also needed a few supplies from around the house.

1. Stapler that opens
2. Ruler or other measuring tool
3. Iron

All told, this project should take between 30 minutes and 1 hour.

1. Step 1 - Remove the glass from the picture frame and set aside. I'll have to come up with something to do with it later.
2. Step 2 - Cut 2 pieces of approximately 14x17 fabric. I felt that one piece was too thin, but two pieces covered the cork board nicely and looked whiter.
3. Step 3 - Iron the fabric. Irons make me nervous. I avoid them if I can, but in this case, ironed fabric just looks nicer.
4. Step 4 - Lay out the fabric with the cork board on top. I tried two different methods of stapling (I'll explain why later). You can see in the pictures for one try, I cut out most of the corner and folded, and for the second take, I used less fabric and folded the corner in, then stapled. Either worked well. My staples are probably 1" to 1.5" apart. I just estimated what felt best for keeping the fabric taut.
5. Step 5 - Fit the board into the frame. Unfortunately, the back won't fit back on. After I've used this once or twice, I might go back and glue it in, but the board isn't loose at all. I would have preferred to use the back to be able to stand up the board, but I ended up using a frame stand instead, and the frame became mostly decoration and a little added weight.
6. Using the ruler, decide how far apart the eye screws need to be. I want to hang wine charms on, so I measured out six across and five down. After measuring the first row and the beginning of the second, I used the grain of the fabric as a guide and it worked fine.
1. Here's why I had to staple twice: on the first attempt, instead of eye screw, I used double sided tacks, which are basically big staples. It didn't work. Hammering them in was a pain, and then they weren't big enough for the wine charms to clasp. I took off the fabric which now had ugly holes in it, put on fresh fabric, and tried again using eye screws, which worked beautifully, although my thumb was pretty tired by the end.

That's it! See the pictures below to see all the steps.

All told, and without looking at my receipts, I'd say I spend about $25. I probably could have found a frame at thrift shop or something, but it wasn't convenient to where I was.

What do you think?