Fabulous, Fantastic, and Frugal Friday - Gift No. 5 - Monogrammed Shutter Organizer

My apologies for being a day late on this. Our cable had a major outage before I could load the pictures. So, without further ado...

Have you been looking out for shutters?


If not, don't despair. You can find these babies all over the place... Craigslist... junk shops... on the side of the road... salvage yards...

Mine came from Craigslist. I got 10 for $10. Some of them even have yummy little white glass knobs and hooks. What a score!

They had wooden dowels on the back that had to get taken off. The slots wouldn't have been big enough for mail, cards, and pictures to slide in if the dowels had been left in place.


I then glued all the slats where I wanted them with a dab of glue on each side of the slat. Be sure to do that on the back. ;)
After the glue dried, this one got coated in black spray paint.


I used some sandpaper to distress it a bit.

I also painted and distressed the "a" that I used to personalize it.


I picked these up from the dollar store. I plan on using them on some of the remaining shutters.


I'm not sure how this will get used. If it gets propped up somewhere the papers would just slip through. I decided to staple fabric on the back to prevent that.


It didn't look finished to me so I hot glued some ribbon on top of the staples.


Next, I glued on the cute distressed monogram and coated the whole thing with varnish.
(Although, next time I'll skip the varnish - a bit shiny for my taste.)


You can add hanging hardware to the back.
This one is upright but I plan to make a few that are lengthwise. Add some hooks to the bottom if you want a place to hang keys.

That's it, folks. It's that simple.