Apartment Therapy Unplugged | Reverse Engineer: How To Feel Up Your Monitor

Y'all ready for your first Reverse Engineer project? This one's easy. We promise.

On Monday we wrote about a series of adorable laptop sleeves made be a French duo. We thought, why not take their idea and make it a bit more utilitarian? We like the idea of accessorizing your computer, but it's also nice to have accessories that are both cute and functional.

So welcome the felt bulletin monitor...

Here's how we made it.

Large piece of cardboard or foamboard (two to three inches larger than your computer monitor)
Cork roll
Fabric, such as felt, to cover corkboard
Glue gun
Sticky Back Velcro

So first you'll want to measure your monitor's screen and then add two inches to all sides. This will be the size of the frame. On your foam board measure out both the overall frame's dimensions and the screen's dimensions within.

Using an x-acto knife, cut out the frame and then cut out the screen. Do the exact same thing with the cork roll.
Then glue the two pieces together.

Now this is where things get a teeny weeny bit more complicated. Place the foam/cork frame on your fabric and roughly cut a piece that is one-inch larger (on all sides) than the frame. Replace the frame on this newly cut fabric and mark where the screen will be. Cut the screen out one-inch smaller on all sides. You should now have a cut of fabric that is larger than the frame, yet has a smaller screen hole. The extra fabric is going to be use to wrap around the outer and inner edges of the frame like you would do if you were stretching canvas over a frame.

Place the frame cork-side down on the fabric. Pull the outer edges over onto the foam-side and glue them down. Snip into the corners of the inner edges and pull each strip over and glue it onto the foam. Voilá!
We then got a bit precious and glued eyelet trimming on both the outer and inner edges, but you can keep it as is or add whatever you'd really like.

How you get it on your monitor is a problem we're hoping you have a solution for. We used Sticky Back Velcro on all four corners (thanks Gregory for the tip!). One side of the Velcro sticks onto the housing of your monitor and the other onto your frame. It's not the best solution though since the sticky part of the Velcro is incredibly sticky and could cause problems when you decide you don't want the frame anymore.