This is the story of how I made our new headboard out of $7 of plastic sheeting and some pillows.
Now it looks like this 😀 😀 😀
And before it looked like this…
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No Home Sweet Home page, I’m really behind on those >_<So my old bed was ok but it really didn’t match the rest of the changes I’d made to the bedroom. Meeeeh. You need:
We rent so obviously I couldn’t screw anything to the walls nor could I afford a new bed frame so instead I made one that just slotted in.
This is the kind of plastic board I used, it was from Bunnings.
I taped it all together into one big piece.
And cut it down so it was the right width and height to slot in behind the bed.
Then James and I sat down on the bed and traced around ourselves to work out how big I needed to make the curve so we could still lean on it comfortably.
We filled them in to be terrible drawings of ourselves… because we’re awesome.
Then we added in some love messages because we’re smoopy like that. And now when I lean against the headboard I always think about how much I love him!
So classy!
Aaaaaaanyway…. I drew on the design of the headboard making sure to leave room for James’ abs.
And the other side too.
Then I cut it out.
To save time later I drew the placement of where the buttons would eventually go. To make sure they were even I made a grid with a fancy thing called a ruler 😀
Then I poked holes through with a pair of scissors.
Now for the design! We managed to get a doona (duvet) cover for $40 on sale at Target and it came with pillow cases. I wanted different pillow cases so I decided to use them on the headboard instead. Luckily the pattern matched up.
I opened them out so there was enough fabric to cover the whole thing. It didn’t reach the bottom but that really didn’t matter because it would be covered up by the actual bed.
Now it was time for the fun part: pillow stuffing.
I emptied an old pillow all over the plastic.
And hot glued it in place. I didn’t have too much stuffing so when I have money for more I’ll be buying some and opening it up and restuffing. Kinda looks like a big cloud 😀
Once it was fluffy I laid out the fabric and hot glued it along the bottom to the plastic.
I then made sure there were no wrinkles and slowly went around the edge hot gluing it around the back side. It was very important to pull it tight. It was also important not to burn myself. I only managed to do one of those things though. While gluing the edges I made sure to put stuffing over them too so the fabric didn’t show the sharp edges of the plastic.
Taadaaa…
It started looking more like something useful at this point! And James said he doubted I could make it work!!!
And the back. I reinforced it with some off cuts to make sure it didn’t bend.
Close ups of glue…
And this is it slotted in the bed:
The last step is to add in the buttons. At first I tried to make my own buttons by covering more plastic but that was extremely tedious so instead I got off my butt and bought some nicer ones 😀
To hold them in place at the back I used some cardboard off cuts cut like this. I threaded each button, stitched it through the hole leaving the ends both out the back of the hole then tied them around the piece of cardboard so they were kept in place. Hard to explain but it works. It’s very important to keep the buttons as tight as possible so they make nice dents in the fabric.
Like this:
The buttons pucker the fabric through the padding.
And that’s it!
I am extremely happy with how this turned out. While it’s not the most professional thing in the world it brightens the room up beautifully, matches all my new decorating and it was extremely cheap.
What do you guys think? I think the Home Sweet Home project is starting to come along nicely~ |
