Inexpensive wall decorations

Materials: HEAT trivets, IKEA-fabric, staples, fishing line

Description: I purchased a lot of HEAT trivets and fabric from IKEA, and pretty much just stapled fabric onto the trivet.

I connected the trivets together using fishing line, so that it kind of looks like the trivets are "floating" on the wall.

Easy and fun :)

~ Tina, Oslo

Fabric Covered Cork Board

Materials: 3 X Heat Cork

Description: Place cork on fabric & trace around leaving about an inch of space.

Cut the fabric.

Ready the hot glue gun. Place fabric face down with cork on top & begin gluing around the edges of the cork.

Continue all the way around & you're done! Marvel at your sweet ten minute project!

See more of the fabric covered corkboard.

~ Nicole, United States

Cork Mat Knife Block

Materials: Materials: 2 packages of Heat, utility knife, wood glue

Description: We wanted a knife block. We only have three knives, but we keep them sharp and we like them. Thought they needed some love and protection. Most knife blocks have lots of space for knives (go figure) and cost a lot of money. So, our answer was Heat.

Two sets purchased, three mats in each set, gave us a nice deep stack of 6 cork mats. On one mat, we traced our knives for length, and then cut out U-shapes to suit. It took a bit of debate to decide how angled we wanted our knives to sit. But he with the utility knife wins the day. So he then added appropriately placed slits to the middle three mats.

I made sure to mark the edge of all mats, to make it easier to line them up. We left the bottom two mats without any cuts so that they could act as the anchoring base. Then, using wood glue, he stuck the mats together.
Presto. Our knife block.

~ Katie and Mike, Edinburgh

HEAT notice board

Materials: Nine HEAT trivers, thin bars of wood, two screw hooks

Description: I had needed a notice board for a long time but did not like the look of the most of I've seen on sale. One night I was just falling asleep when I got an idea: I'll make the notice board using the round IKEA trivets.

I bought three packets of HEAT-trivet, attached two hooks to wood bars I had lying around and hot-glued them to the back of the trivets. Done! It works and I love it!

See more of the Heat notice board.

~ Ilka, Helsinki, Finland

Cork board turtle

Materials: 5 packs of HEAT cork trivets, primer, paint, damage-free hanging strips


Description: This is a pretty simple hack, but we were happy with it and wanted to share.

We live away from both our families and wanted to hang a cork board in our son's wall to post snapshots of his friends and family. We went to Ikea with the intention of buying a framed cork board, but on our way through the kitchen section, we saw the 7" round HEAT cork trivets. At that time we didn't have a specific plan for them, but once we got home we started brainstorming.

At first we thought about just hanging the trivets in a rectangle, then quickly decided we needed a more interesting pattern. With all kinds of leftover paint in the basement we also thought a bit of color would be nice. Inspiration really struck when we had the trivets on the floor trying to figure out a good pattern. Thus was born the cork board turtle.

We used 14 total trivets (12 for the shell, one for the head, and one cut in half for the feet). The cork absorbs the paint quite a bit, so it is recommended to prime them first. Each trivet took one coat of primer and two coats of paint. The paint used here is Glidden premium eggshell interior paint (they were actually "tintable testers" from another project, which is a pretty inexpensive way to get 8oz of this type of paint).

They are held in place with one Command damage-free hanging strip per trivet.

~ Mark Marion, Reston, VA