put a cork in it

My office echoes like crazy, so I had been meaning to make some fabric wall hangings or something to try to absorb some of the sound. Kelly told me that cork is great for sound insulation, so I decided to use cork and mount fabric to it. I also needed some bulletin boards, so voila, use cork!

The one on the left has a pocket along the bottom. The inspiration for these bulletin boards came of course from Sally and her amazing wall pockets. The board on the right has a couple of little pockets on the bottom left. Here’s a closeup of the board:
I got a pack of four large-ish cork tiles, but they were on the thin side, so I glued two together (didn’t want the push pins to go through to the wall).
For the wall hanging dealies I got small squares of cork (they came four to a pack) and covered them with some of my favorite fabrics.
It’s a fun way for me to commemorate early superbuzzy fabrics, too!
Frontal assault view:

I’m quite happy with how these turned out. They were easy to make, too. I fused the fabric onto the cork using double-sided fusible stuff called Steam-a-Seam:
I just cut out squares, fused the fabric onto the front, then cut small strips (I also purchased a roll of skinny tape, also Steam-A-Seam) to fuse the flaps onto the back. The stuff isn’t as sticky as it claims, but it still worked quite well. The only downside is cork is pretty smelly!
A couple people have asked about our pink tree. It’s not vintage or anything (remember, I’m trashy and unsophisticated), but it’s cute. We got it on sale at Michael’s. It’s only 4 feet tall. It’d be fun to have a really huge one. Anyway, here is a shot with the lights on and one with the lights off:

Well, I’m off to San Francisco for the day with some friends, so if you see a bunch of loud women clad in polarfleece, you might want to run the other way.