Recovered Headboard

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Hi!
 Are you ready for another home decor post? Good, because you're getting one!

Ok, so since I painted our guest room a VERY light blue, and bought all white bedding for it, I wasn't feeling the dark brown leather headboard that was originally in the room.


Since I'm too cheap to go out and buy a new one, I decided that I wanted to reupholster it myself. Thankfully, I have a WONDERFUL mother-in-law who offered to help me while they were in town this past weekend. We weren't sure if it would turn out well, but we knew we had to try it! We spent pretty much all Friday afternoon buying fabric and supplies for the new headboard.

I found directions to make a trufted fabric headboard HERE, and we used that as our guide. Let me just say that I would have NEVER been able to do this without Judy (my MIL)...she was so talented at this! And she understands my need for things to be perfect :).
 

We were the most nervous about tufting the headboard....but we did it and it looks amazing! The fabric that I picked out is really busy, so it's hard to see the buttons and how much detail that add, but I promise it looks great in real life.


Here is the back of the headboard, I threaded the buttons and Judy tied them to back.


I am in LOVE with this. It matches the room perfectly. And we did the whole thing for about $40!



I learned that making fabric covered buttons is SO easy and kind of fun :). That was one of my jobs. I should also mention that Bryan helped us out so much by drilling the holes for the buttons.


We spent about an hour trying to make the corners lay right. It was hard work, but it looks really good. You can see one of them really well in this picture:


Here it is with some of the bedding (I'm still not completely done with that part yet).


I really love this project--it is probably one of my favorites!

Have a great rest of your weekend!

More Flower Bows!

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Alright, well remember last week how I mentioned that I had found several ways to make flower bows? Well, today I'm showing you one of those methods as well as one I came up with myself. I love them both so much!
Sidenote: Sorry to anyone who reads this for personal posts... I know these craft posts are SUPER boring for you, but I wanted to blog about them so you will have to deal....or you can just not read these!

First are these silk flowers that I've been seeing everywhere:


What you will need:

-Silk/Satin Fabric (I bought fabric remnants at Joann's--you don't need that much)
-Candle
-Scissors
-Beads of buttons
-Needle and thread
-Pins or hair clips
-Wax paper
-Hot glue

First, cut out 4 or 5 circular peices of fabric at varying sizes. They don't have to be perfect, you can just freehand them.


Next, light a candle and hold the edges of each circle over the flame until they curl. Be careful not to let them burn or catch on fire! If they do melt or burn, you can trim off the edges and do it again.


Once you have all the edges curled, stack the "petals" on top of each other however you want.


Take beads or buttons (I sacrificed old necklaces that I haven't worn in years for this part) and sew a cluster of them to the center of the flower to secure all the petals and add a cute little decoration!


The finished product! (P.S. These are huge...like almost as big as my hand)


Here are pictures of the other ones I made:



This one looks black in the picture, but it's chocolate brown...I love it! And the buttons are a LOT easier to sew on than the beads.


I LOVE this one!






Ok, the next bow I made up myself! I was playing around with the ribbon I had used for normal hairbows and came up with this:


Cute, right?

Here's what you need to make it:

-4 9inch long strips of wide ribbon
-3 7.5inch long strip of thin ribbon
-Hot glue gun
-A button
-Hair clip
-Wax Paper

First, cut all the ribbon strips.


Next, hot glue each ribbon strip into a circle:


Hot glue each circle in the middle to make into a bow shape:


Take the thick ribbons and make into a flower shape, hot gluing each layer down on top of the next:


Do the same with the thin ribbon:


Hot glue the thin ribbon flower on top of the thick ribbon flower:


Then, add a button, and you're done!


Oh, I also glued all of my bows to alligator clips using hot glue and wax paper...



Here is a another "Ribbon Flower Bow" that I made:



Cute!



Yay hair bows! Can you tell I'll be sad if I don't have a girl of my own? Haha!

Second Time Better Be A Charm...

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

So....you know those wood floors we spent pretty much all of Christmas break installing? Yeah, they decided to start coming up in the kitchen and laundry room. After several failed attempts to inject Liquid Nails into the seams of the boards, Bryan decided to try and pull them up and start from scratch. Luckily, they all came up as easily as if they were never glued down. Yes, that's right, as if they were never glued down. I know I should be happy about this, and I am, but I would be a LOT happier if the glue had worked the first time around and we didn't have to spend our Tuesday night without a usable kitchen or dryer (the laundry's piling up!).




In all fairness, I think that this whole situation was totally our fault. When Bryan originally did the floors, we decided to make a quick trip to Wal-Mart and buy off-brand wood glue after running out of the original glue late one night. We were so tired of having our house torn up that we just wanted to get it done (!), and we thought Wal-Mart's brand would be good enough....we were SO wrong. As it turns out, that particular wood glue was HORRIBLE. I'm pretty sure we re-did every single board that was originally glued down with it.

BUT we are finished (just waiting for it to dry), and now we know to be patient and to get quality supplies when doing projects like this.

And so, with all the floor drama behind us (knock on wood--pun intended!), I will leave you with a picture of the cutest dog on the planet:


Aw, I know...he's adorable. And yes, that white spot on his ear is caulk. As in the caulk that we used for the fireplace....that's what you get when you're parents like to redo their house themselves :).

I also think he wants to be a human. He's getting really good at walking on his hind legs. I can taunt him with a dog biscuit and he can stand for seriously like 10 seconds...I think it's impressive.


Excuse the blurriness, it's hard to taunt your dog and take a picture at the same time.

Have a great day!

Guest Room Progress

Monday, January 24, 2011

With Bryan's parents coming to Lubbock this weekend, we thought it was time to finally paint and re-do the guest bedroom. We actually meant to do this the last time they came to stay with us (in September...) but we never got around to it.

As I mentioned in my last post, I didn't know if this would actually happen since Bryan was sick, but I ended up deciding to do everything on my own. It's no where close to being done, but I feel like a got a lot accomplished for one Saturday night. I painted the entire room, repainted all the trim, hung new curtains, moved the bed (Bryan helped with that part) and began putting on the new bedding that I bought on sale about a month ago. Oh, and I re-organized the closet.

Some of the things I still need to do are:

-Touch up the ceiling paint
-Put in new bamboo blinds (we are ordering those this week!)
-Make a decorative pillow with some fabric I bought specifically for this room
-Finish putting all the bedding together (almost done with that part)
-Put up wall decorations (Probably hang some frames and a sunburst mirror over the bed)
-Move the floor lamp from our room to this room

...I think that's it. Since it's not done yet, I'm just showing you a couple of pictures....

Before: (Yuck.)


After:


Much better!


Now I just need to finish it, which I will hopefully achieve by Thursday, because that's when Al and Judy get here!

Oh, and in case you're wondering....all of the junk in the "Before" picture was moved to the other guest room...haha :).

Have a great week!

Sick Day

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Well, this weekend will be pretty low key because Bryan's sick!


I went to Wal-Mart last night to stock up on medicine, Ramen, and Gatorade....so we should be good from here on out! We were doing to redecorate the guest room this weekend with new bedding and new paint (that I bought 4 months ago...), but that may have to wait (unless I randomly feel like doing that on my own).

I hope your weekend's more eventful than ours!

Fabric Flower Bows

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Hi everyone! As you know, Bryan and I will be getting a NIECE in April. Alisha (my sister-in-law) has asked me to be the official bow-maker for little miss Hensley, so I spend a lot of my time trying to find different ways to make cute bows.

Before Christmas I learned how to make standard hair bows, and thought they were so fun to make! (I will post more about these soon).



But I really wanted to make some sort of flower bow--more than just buying a fake flower and gluing a hair clip to it. I was so happy when I came across these fabric flower bows--I just had to try them! AND I used fabric that I already had, so this project was FREE! I also found 2 other ways to make flower bows, so I plan on trying those in the next few weeks!


What you'll need:

-1 strip of fabric (2inches wide, 2 feet long)
-Hot glue gun
-Bow clips, alligator clips, pins, headbands....whatever you want to attach it to
-Wax Paper
-Buttons or bling (optional)

First, cut out the strip of fabric (I cut out several strips here, because I was making a cluster of flowers)


Next, take your strip of fabric and begin to wrap it into a "cinnamon roll" shape, twisting and bunching the fabric as you go along. Add a dot of hot glue every once in a while to hold it in place.


Once you have an inch of fabric left, hot glue it to the back of the flower. Clip your hair clip (I used alligator clips) to a piece of wax paper and put hot glue on top. Attach flower and wait for it to dry.




Remove the bow once it is dry and add buttons, bling, or leave it plain.

I chose to add green buttons to this one!


I also made a huge white one and I'm still debating whether or not to add a button or leave it plain...



Decisions, decisions.

Here's a few more pictures of the 3 I made:



Here's one of the back. I actually put an extra layer of white backing on it just to hold everything in place.



You can even use these as a pretty cute purse clip!



That's it for now!

I've decided to try these link parties, so go visit the The Shabby Nest for more crafts and decor :)