The easiest way to make a felt letterboard

Hey there, friends! I am so excited for this month's Monthly DIY Challenge!!!! (New here? My friends and I tackle a themed item on the second Wednesday of each month. Such a fun way to spark creativity!) This month, we chose wooden dowel rods as the challenge item, and I instantly knew what I wanted to make! By now, you've probably seen those  cute little felt letterboards all over Instagram, Pinterest, and the show Fixer Upper. I've been eyeing them for quite a while. Well, if you've ever looked into buying one, it will definitely cost you!!! That's the best thing about DIY... you can usually make things yourself for way less money! So this month, that's exactly what I planned to do. Find out how I made my own letterboard and take a look at nine other creative ideas for using wooden dowel rods!

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Materials:

• dowel rods
• black felt
• scissors
• hot glue gun and hot glue sticks
• shadow box or picture frame
• letterboard letters (I don't recommend the ones I bought for this project. More details below.)

How to make a DIY letter board:

For some reason, I haven't seen any letterboards that seem to fit rustic style decor. They all have frames that fit more modern or boho decor. So before I did anything, I picked out a square frame with a rustic wood grain. The one I chose is a shadow box I found at my local craft store.

You can find the dowel rods in most craft stores. They come in different lengths and widths. I found packs of 3/16" dowel rods that would work perfectly for this, but you can also buy the rods individually. You'll need to measure your dowel rods and cut them to size. I measured the inside width of my shadow box and marked the dowels. Then I used a hand saw to cut them. I promise this is the most tedious part. Turn on some fun music and get sawing... or rope your significant other into doing it for you! ;)

Once your rods are cut, cut your felt to size. I cut about one inch strips and made sure they were the same length as the dowels. I didn't do any precise measuring here. It's okay if they are a little wider than an inch. Now, get your hot glue gun ready!

I glued in small sections, a few inches at a time. Lay a rod on top of a strip of felt. Apply hot glue to a short section of the rod itself towards one end. Pinch the felt around the rod. You should end up with something that looks like this...

Then, glue the next section. Do the same thing, applying glue to a short section of the rod and then pinching the felt around it. You can see in the photo below how big of a section I was gluing at once. And see those rods on the right? That's what they look like when you're finished gluing the whole thing.

Next, glue them into the shadow box. Put a small glob (glob is an official crafting word, right?) of hot glue on each end of the box. Put a felt covered rod into place with the pinched end facing up. Hold pressure around the globs of glue at the ends for a few seconds. Repeat until your box is full.

Once the shadow box or frame is full of rods, it will look pretty ugly from the back. Don't worry about all of the glue strands and fuzzies that are everywhere.

Flip it over, and you should have a pretty little felt letterboard!

Now you can apply whatever letters or quotes you want. I will tell ya, the letters I bought suck. Don't buy them. They just don't stick to the felt very well. I'm sure they work fine on a real letter board, but they don't sit correctly between the dowels. I am on the hunt for new letters that will work better. If you find some, please let me know and I will update this post with it!

I'm loving it though! Isn't it cute?!? And it was so easy to do! Once you get into your groove with gluing the felt on, it really goes quickly.

Don't have time to make your own? Here's a couple of reputable sources that I have friends who have purchased letterboards from:

-Letterfolk
-Three Potato Four

Check out 9 other dowel rod project ideas:

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