You've Got Mail

James and I have a huge problem with mail piling up in our "catch-all" basket that sits on our counter. It started becoming an eye-sore and driving me nuts so I went looking for a mail sorter. But the ones that I liked were $20 and up... not terribly expensive but more than I wanted to spend. I knew I could make something for much cheaper so I looked around the house for supplies. I had wall hangings in my kitchen that I was planning on taking down - they're hanging where I'm putting my chalkboard dish and the colors did not match our kitchen anymore. I bought two of these for I think $5 each at Wal-Mart back in college. They're very cute, but just don't go in our place. I decided to use one for my project. They're the perfect width and height and already had a way to hang them on the back!
After I painted a few coats of white paint I had on hand to make a blank slate, I attached some fabric to the wood. I put modge podge on the front, placed the fabric on and smoothed out the wrinkles, then flipped it over and hot glued it on the back and put some modge podge over the edges in case it frayed. I also needed something to fashion pockets to hold the mail, so I grabbed some matboard and cut out 2 squares (same width as board and I made mine 6 inches tall), then 4 triangles (3 inches wide and 6 inches tall) to make two little pockets. I hotglued them together. They don't look perfect but I was covering them anyways!I then covered them in the same fabric with modge podge and hot glue again. The inside doesn't look awesome, but you can't see the seams too much and it's the INSIDE and no one can see it! I then hotglued the pockets to the board. I plan on adding two little labels for MAIL IN and MAIL OUT so we can keep things organized. The total cost on this was $0 since I had the board and matboard from previous decorating and the fabric was from my stash - and even if I had to add the cost of the fabric, it was a fat quarter for 50% off at HL that ended up costing about 3$. Not too shabby!I still have another board and matboard left so maybe I'll make another to put bathroom stuff in. Or I can just paint the board and cover with fabric that actually matches the house and call it good.

Linking up to Frugal Friday and Show And Share Day