Postcard Wall Hanger

Call me old-fashioned, but I really do like writing and receiving
postcards ! Every time a friend or family member goes on vacation, I slip them a post-it with my address and ask them to send one to me. This results, naturally, in me having lots of different cards from all over the world laying around at my home. As I do enjoy giving them a glance from time to time, I wanted to organise them in a way that I could see them all and also change or add some cards whenever I receive a new one. In this instructable, I will show you how I designed and crafted a wall hanger that holds all my cards on display.

Usually, all my projects start at the desk where I like
to gather my ideas and start drawing some designs. So I sat down, started to scribble and quickly came up with something that I liked. I was thinking of a rectangular painted board attached to the wall with hooks on the backside, where I could attach strings that would hold the postcards. For the painting I decided to go for a nautical theme as I had recently passed the sailing exam (yay) and thought it would fit nicely into my entrance area.

The materials I got from my local "Do it yourself"-store and from the internet. I bought:

1 x Wooden board 150 x 20 x 1.8cm (length x width x depth)

4 x Wooden rectangles 5 x 20 x 1.8cm (length x width x depth) - I used two strips of the same wooden board which I cut off

4 x long screws

4 x screw anchors

Attention: I did not use those on the picture ! Instead, I used shorter ones. Measure before you buy.

10 x small screw hooks

1 x Pack of Paper Clips

Strings and Paint (depending on the design)

It is a straightforward project, hence I didn't need so many tools:

an electric drill

scissors

a paint brush

Now I could paint it according to my design. First of all, I painted the entire board with a white base coat. I am no good at painting and therefore tried to make a simple geometrical design with navy blue stripes for the border. For the symbols like the anchor and so on, I printed them on a piece of paper in the size I needed, cut them out with the scissors and then traced the outlines onto the board. In between the symbols, I sketched the words with a pen and when I was happy, I painted it over with the navy blue colour.

Almost done. I let the paint dry over night. The other day, I sawed the end of the board of and the piece I got into two, so I could glue them on the board. In the end, I screwed the hooks into the backside of the board (where the rectangular strips are).

Then I started to cut the strings to random lengths and attached them to the paper clips and the screw hooks. Finally, I could hang the postcards on the paper clips. Getting it up onto the wall was fairly easy, I asked someone to help and then first drilled two holes into the board. Then I measered where the holes in the wall ned to be, drilled them as well and put the screw anchor inside the holes in the wall. Now I just needed to put the screw through the predrilled hole and screw them into the wall anchor - done. A little paint will hide the screwheads, and that was it ! Unfortunately I don't have pictures of these steps, that's why I made a drawing and tried to explain.

I love the outcome and hope that people will continue sending me postcards so I can use my wall hanger often ! The project is easy to do and you can go wild with the designs and also with the shapes of the board. In case you're moving, you can easily take it with you by removing the screws. Also, adding more cards is not an issue, you take some more paper clips and strings and attach it on the underside of a card that is already hanging. Another idea that came to my mind was to make sort of a grid, with two weights on strings on either side of the board and then attach vertical strings to those lines. You could attach the postcards using clothes-pegs for example.

Anyways, thanks for reading !