{Jewellery Week} How to Make a Brooch Board

My collection of vintage brooches has really outgrown my jewellery box, and I was getting so fed up tipping it out every day to choose a brooch for my outfit that I decided to make myself a display board for them. This is super basic and requires virtually no tools or handiwork.

You will need:

• Picture frame
• Felt remnant slightly larger than frame
• Piece of batting or wadding the same size as frame

I got my frame in a charity shop (for £2.29. Anywhere else you can probably pick one up for around 20p / 20c) - I thought the faux bamboo had a pleasingly retro tiki look. My wadding is an offcut of organic cotton quilt batting (it's quite thin so I used two layers) left over from Joanna's quilting.

1. Open up the back of the frame and remove the backing board, picture and glass.

2. Cut the wadding to the size of the backing board. Cover with the felt so that there is an overlap of about 1/2" or so all the way around.

3. Slot the covered board back into the frame, and secure in place. My board fits very snugly in the frame with the felt. Clip the corners of the felt (I stapled the corners - the board is too hard for the staples to actually go in, but it keeps the felt neat).

Simple as that! I chose not to add any embellishment because I knew my brooches wouldn't fit otherwise, but it would look cute with a gingham ribbon bow at the top (which is what I'd originally planned), or an embroidered border.

While we're here, I thought I'd show you a couple of pieces in my collection you haven't seen before. This heart stick pin is one of the most recent additions - I got it last weekend at an antique fair. The gentleman who sold it told me it was made of perspex from an aeroplane windscreen - was it "sweetheart jewellery"?

The little silver Malay stilt house brooch is a family piece from the 1950s. My mother's side of the family were all colonial, going back generations - my great-great-great grandfather Henry even translated the bible into Tamil. Mummy was born in India, then lived in Malaya (now Malaysia) until independence, when the family moved to England.