DIY Giant Magnet Board for Cards

This is a project I’ve wanted to make for a long time, and I had to recruit my husband and his workshop to help me. He was excited about this magnet board, too, so he was very willing to help. We wanted a place where we could put up the various cards the kids and I have made for him over the years.

This magnet board is quite large to fit a very big and very bare bedroom wall. We picked up a thin sheet of 4’ x 3’ galvanized steel at Home Depot, two yards of brown fabric at JoAnn’s, and everything else was already in hubby’s garage.

He wanted to make it thick and substantial to give it depth against the wall, but not be overly heavy. He built a backing for the metal sheet by layering ¼” plywood, a narrow frame to give depth, and then another layer of ¼” plywood where the fabric could be stapled and wall mounting parts could be attached. To lighten the load, he cut out holes in the back piece of plywood which would not be seen in the finished project.  The whole thing is about 48″ wide x 36″ tall x 1.5″ thick.

Then he used a brad nailer to attach the metal sheet to the wooden base (the solid side without cutouts). He also used some protective tape to keep the edges from snagging the fabric.

At this point it was ready to attach the fabric. We laid the fabric, wrong side up, on a large work surface and placed the metal side of the back board against the fabric. (We trimmed the fabric down so it had an equal amount extended beyond the frame on each side–about 6″.) He pulled each edge tight as he nailed the fabric in place, saving the corners for last.

We actually cut away some of the fabric on the corners so we could make a nice, tight corner that wasn’t bulky.

He attached picture-hanging hardware to the back and hung it on our wall. You can see it has some nice depth to it. We’re just using small but super-strong magnets to hold the cards in place. It has been fun to have this in our room to display and enjoy our handmade cards. Now that we have such a nice place to put them, I can make a whole bunch more for him!