DIY A Whimsical Pinboard That Also Helps With Sound-Dampening

Want to create multifunctional wall art without picking up a paintbrush? Let adhesive-backed felt tiles be your medium. Artfully arranged on a wall, these tiles become decor and a pin board. Yet these sticky fabric pieces can do even more for your home. They are great for absorbing sound, and the icing on the cake is that they also insulate. These tiles tend to be squares, rectangles, or hexagons, but why go for a basic rectangular wall hanging when you can cobble together whimsical custom art pieces? Whatever route you choose, this unusual piece of wall art will add a unique touch to your home.

Instagrammer Kristen Buckhout of @livedin_interiors shows how to create a pixelated goose wall hanging entirely with square felt tiles; Buckhout even demonstrates how well the tiles work as a pinboard. Square shapes give you a blocky Minecraft-look, hexagons are great for rounded designs, and rectangles look sleek as part of an abstract geometric mural. Buckhout uses a paper-based design on a grid to help her create the pinboard. The grid on the paper shows the layout, square by square, of the adorable white goose. With some black tiles for eyes and brown tiles for the beak and legs, the resulting nearly human-sized pinboard goose is ready to play multiple roles. Add them as a sound buffer for a music, play, or media room, or line a chilly wall with them for a bit more winter warmth. 

Whether you copy an Instagrammer's cute creation or come up with your own, there are a variety of charming pinboard options. While Buckhout's project was for a child's room, a felt art pinboard can be attractive and useful in other locations, too. You can piece one together in your home office to make the space more welcoming. Alternatively, they can be ideal as part of your household command center. Sketch out your idea on graph paper, get some help from your computer, or just go with a random smattering of colors and shapes.

If you're even a little bit artsy, you can draw out your plans on square-grid or hexagonal-grid paper. However, not everyone is confident with their own sketches. You can also do this online; there are free image editing programs like GIMP that let you upload a picture and overlay it with a grid. Either printed or followed on a large screen, this becomes a roadmap for your design.

Before beginning the sticking process, make sure your walls are dirt-free to ensure that the adhesive bonds well. Then, using a level, adhere your first row of shapes to the wall; checking that they are even will make placing the remaining tiles easier. Follow your pattern as you apply the rest of your tiles, pressing each tile on firmly.