I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again – I love when people come up with creative ways to turn utilitarian items into something adorable. Take these clothespins for example – One crafty lady decided to transform these inexpensive little wooden clips into something both pretty and functional, simply by adding decorative craft paper and thumb tacks. Awesome. And by turning them into pushpins for your bulletin board, they can be admired each and every day.
Source: Krafty Design
Is it sad that this excites me so much? I KNOW that I can’t be the only one…
Well, they excited me so much that I decided to make my own set. First things first, the clothespins – John sweetly picked up this cheap pack of 50 for me while at the grocery store, but you can find them at pretty much any home improvement or craft store.
As for the paper, I am still working my way through a giant book of scrapbooking paper that I have used for countless projects (such as this one and this one). I began with the pretty blue and white pattern below – A tight repetitive design is best since the surface area of a clothespin is rather small, and you don’t want the detail of a large blown-out pattern to get lost.
I flipped the paper over and laid my clothespin on top, then proceeded to trace around the edge with a pen.
After cutting the shape out, I took some generic craft glue and squeezed a few lines across the top of the pin. I gently laid the cut out on top of the glue, jimmied it around until it matched up with the edge and then let it dry for about ten minutes.
In the meantime, I went ahead with the other three pins in my set of four. Again, I kept my eye out for small patterns in my book of paper and ended up with a cheerfully colorful collection.
Time for the push pins…I used four flat head thumb tacks that I had on hand. Unlike the more standard push pins which have slightly domed heads, these pins are perfectly straight across – Great for adhering flush to the undersides of my clothespin clips.
To attach them, I used wood glue thinking that they would stick best to my, well…WOODEN clothespins (as seen in the below photos). However, in the interest of full disclosure, the wood glue stuck well to the clothespins but not well at all to the plastic/metal push pins. I ended up redoing the adhesion process with super glue, which seems to have done the trick. When in doubt, use super glue!
Here’s my collection of decorative clothespin push pins adding a little interest to my inspiration board. I love the pop of pattern and color and think they are a huge upgrade over plain push pins or thumb tacks.
P.S. This project also was featured as a guest post for Breathe Magazine. Feel free to click over and take a look – Enjoy!
