TUTORIAL: How to Make a Cornice Board

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Today let's talk DIY Cornice Boards today, shall we?  These are seriously so easy to make and install...I know! I always assumed these were so hard to make...but they're not, trust me! 

I have seen lots of them made all crazy weird using plywood or MDF but the way I decided to make these takes the cake (my secret ingredient?  Styrofoam panels!)  so they are nice and lightweight and it's a breeze to take them down to change the color of your fabric when you want a new look!

You will remember (from this post here) I made the cornice boards/valances in my girls' room as well as Noah's bedroom too (seen here).  In this stage of my life, I am really loving cornice boards over curtains to spice up windows.  It seems my little ones love to use curtains as napkins and tarzan-like swinging ropes. So this way I can get pretty color infused into our decor without the insanity of someone pulling a curtain rod on top of their head. Oh, and we have room darkening roller shades underneath the cornice boards for those of you who are wondering just how we cover our windows at night!

DIY Cornice Boards (for one window covering)

One 3/4"x14"x48" panel of Styrofoam (cellofoam poly panel brand)

1 yard of fabric

bread knife

hot glue

straight pins

trim nails

hammer

This is the brand of styrofoam paneling I bought for this project.  I found them at Home Depot as a package of 6 for less than $10.  You can also use them as insulation between studs apparently ;-) 

First thing you need to do is measure your window from one outer edge of the trim to the other.  Cut your paneling, using your bread knife as a saw, to this measurement.  I found that using a bread knife made cutting the styrofoam so much less messy, I hardly had any weird styrofoam static ball thingys thanks to my good 'ol bread knife, who knew! 

Cut two more smaller pieces of the styrofoam panel for the sides of your cornice board.  This measurement will depend on how far you would like your cornice board to come out from the wall, I cut mine to be about 5 inches wide. Then hot glue the outer short edges of your long piece and press the shorter pieces to it like in the picture above!

Then grab your trim nails...these are what mine looked like!

Push a few trim nails into the edge of the styrofoam panels where you just hot glued the two pieces together to doubly secure the cornice board sides into place.

Easy, right!  You can just push them in with your fingers.

Now it's time to cover the cornice board with fabric.  Lay the cornice board over top of the wrong side of the fabric (pictured above) If you have a patterned piece you may want to cut your yard of fabric in half lengthwise so it is less bulky and the folded layer of fabric doesn't show through.  If your fabric is one color you may want to leave it doubled up if you feel it is pretty sheer. 

PS. Make sure you iron your fabric first so you don't have any odd lines on the front of your finished cornice board.

Grab your straight pins...

And fold up one side, pin it, and then do the next, making sure you have nice and tight edges the whole way through.

The sides are a bit tricky but if you go slowly and fold tightly they work themselves out :-)  I used a lot of pins in those corners!

And Voila! Here is what the backside of my cornice board looks like.

To hang it up, you will need two people.  One to hold the cornice board in the correct position and the other to hammer the trim nails into the trim.  Since these styrofoam cornice boards are so light we only used two nails per side...easy peasy!

And there you have it...an easy DIY project to give a nice pop of color to your windows!

Let me know if you have any questions about these cornice boards and I will answer them in the comments!

Thanks for stopping by today!

XOXO,