Pin it! With these minimal DIY push pins

Why shouldn’t everyday objects be beautiful as well as practical?

I recently put together an inspiration (cork) board for myself but I wasn’t crazy about the basic plastic or metal push pins that you can buy.  After all, they don’t look so great, do they? So I decided I needed to decorate the push pins and make them a bit prettier.

I’m a big fan of natural wood and when I spotted a pack of wooden balls in my craft cupboard, I realised these would look great as push pins – nice design and still as functional as they need to be. So that’s what I went with.

These minimal diy push pins are really simple to make and they look great on a cork board. It’s a simple little hack to upgrade an everyday object in to something a bit more special.

Minimal DIY push pins

Materials:
half drilled wooden balls 37mm with 9mm hole* (I got mine here)
clear plastic push pins (I got my board and pins here)
gorilla glue

*You can buy wooden balls without a hole and drill them yourself but that is very fiddly to do so I wouldn’t recommend it.

Gorilla glue is cured with moisture.  So squeeze a very small drop of gorilla glue in to the hole in the wooden ball. Dip the push pin in water and place in the hole.

You need to leave these dry for a good 2 hours. And you’re done.

A few tips to keep in mind:
– I found the best way to create the firmest bond was to pin the balls on to a piece of cork and leave them to dry – as you can see in the picture above.
– make sure you don’t have too much glue because you don’t want it to leak out, otherwise your pins will get stuck to the cork they’re drying on – I learned this from experience 🙂
– when buying the wooden balls and pins, make sure the pins are the right size for the hole in the wooden ball.

I’m really pleased with how these diy push pins turned out and they were so easy to make too. Have you tried any little hacks recently to upgrade an everyday object in to something more? I’d love to hear in the comments.