When I went to Disney World for the first time as a child, I wore my favorite denim hat full of pins that I had collected (yeah… I was so. darn. cool.).  When I arrived at Disney World I became obsessed with finding pins to add to my hat.  This was before Disney trading pins were a thing (Wikipedia says Disney pin trading started in 1999… in case you’re curious).  You guys, I’m a trend setter.  Ok, I know I didn’t start this, but hey, I was doing it before it was cool, so just give me that, alright?  Everyone in my family knew about my pin hat and would save their pins for me and even looked for pins to bring me from vacations, their jobs, anywhere they could find them.

Well, recently my mom dug up a few things from my childhood including my famous pin hat (and an N*SYNC bucket hat, which is still cool no matter what anyone says…).  Nostalgia took me straight back to walking down Main Street in  Magic Kingdom for the first time.  I looked at my little denim cap and started thinking that would be pretty awesome to have a way to display my little pins so I could enjoy them every day.  So, naturally I Googled “Disney Pin Display” and, naturally, a lot of insanely expensive, hideous options came up.  Nope.  Next…

Pinterest!  Of course… there has to be something I could make to hold my pins.  Well, that was also a fail.  I found several options, but decided on creating my own.  I think it turned out pretty cute for what I wanted-a simple pin display I could glance at and be taken straight back to my childhood that didn’t stick out like a sore thumb (why is this a saying, anyway?).

If you’d like to create your own, here’s a short tutorial:

Materials:

• An empty frame (can be an old picture frame, mirror frame, or even a frame you make yourself out of wood scraps)
• plastic canvas (see below for example… I had no idea what they were called, but the Google did… you’re welcome)

• Burlap (any fabric will do as long as your pins have a point to pierce fabric)
• Hot glue gun

Directions:

1. Remove any backing from your frame.
2. Trace the inside of your frame onto the back of the fabric as well as the plastic canvas.  So there is an edge to fold over to make nice, clean edges, trace a larger version of your traced edge onto the back of the fabric so it can be folded over when glued.  If you’re using a picture frame like I did, mark the plastic canvas based on the inner  portion of the frame (the portion where the glass would go) so there is something structurally sound to glue the fabric and plastic canvas to.  Think of it this way… if you cut the plastic canvas smaller than the hole, it’s going to fall right through.  K? K.
3. Place the plastic canvas on top of the fabric. Add hot glue to the frame and place the fabric and plastic canvas onto the hot glue and hold until set.  Next, fold the fabric over the plastic canvas and glue all edges down.
4. Next, I added a ring of hot glue around all edges to make sure everything stayed in place.
5. Add your pins for an adorable pin frame!

You could probably skip the plastic canvas as long as the fabric you choose has a fairly rigid stricture in your frame.  I knew that burlap is fairly forgiving fabric, so I chose to add the plastic canvas for structural rigidity (yep… the engineer in me is coming out… sorry)

Now, it’s time to take our littles to Disney to add to the collection!