Well, here’s our first diy project.  I say ours, but Lotus Dude did most of the work.  I photographed, which counts as work too!  We decided to use modified French memory boards to display the escort cards.

The needed materials were canvas in the desired size, cotton batting, fabric in your wedding colors, ribbon, staples and a staple gun, scissors, and decorative tacks.  We chose to use a small canvas and scrap fabric for the first one just to make sure we knew what we were doing and not wasting good fabric.

The first thing we did is cut the batting so that we had 2 sheets that were just a little bit bigger that the canvas and layer them on top of the canvas.  Then it would be a good idea to iron the fabric.  (We learned this the hard way.)  Next, cut a sheet of your fabric that is two to three inches bigger than the canvas on all sides.  We wrapped it tightly around the canvas, over the layers of batting, and stapled the fabric to the wooden frame on the back of the canvas.  We used one staple approximately every 1.5 to 2 inches.  Exact measurements are not important, but you want enough staples to make sure that the fabric is held taut across the entire canvas.

The next part can vary based on how you want to arrange the ribbons.  It’s often done so the ribbons are diagonal, forming diamond shapes on the board.  However, we decided to do our ribbons vertically and horizontally because we think we’ll be able to fit more escort cards on it this way.  We measured the width of the ribbon, the size of the canvas, and divided it out to determine the distance between the ribbons.  We put one ribbon on the edge and stapled it to the wooden frame on the back of the canvas.  Again, it should be tight enough to remain taut when the board is vertical.  We used a ruler to measure where the next ribbon should go, and did the same until we reached the end of the board.  We did the same for the horizontal ribbons.

Almost done at this point!  We just took the decorative tacks and put them at every place the ribbons intersected.  The tacks did stick out the back of the canvas, so we also decided to put small corks on the back of the tacks so no one stuck themselves (we picked these up in the doll-making area at the craft store).  Of course, this is optional.  If you’re going to hang it on the wall, it’s probably not necessary.

And that’s it!  It’s a pretty easy project but it can look really pretty and it can even be used afterwards in your home or office.  It would be great to display wedding mementos and photographs.