Tufted Headboard from an Ugly Couch

So you probably remember my post about painting my loveseat and I mentioned how my plan was to reupholster the bigger couch. Well, I sort of halfway did that. While I was trying to decide what kind of fabric to cover it with, we were storing it in the bedroom because we didn't have any other space for it. I started to think about how even after I did that project, where would I put the finished piece? The apartment could really only comfortably have one six foot couch in it and I didn't feel like getting rid of the couch I so painstakingly recovered a few months ago. That's when this new idea popped in my head. This whole time we've been in this apartment I knew I wanted to make myself a tufted headboard and after having the couch in our bedroom lined up perfectly with our bed for a while it finally clicked in my head to covert the couch into a headboard. Here's a photo of the couches I found at Goodwill. The one on the right is the one I used for this project. I hated that fabric, so it had to go.

I slowly started taking the fabric off the couch, with help from my cat Gremlin.

I only really bothered to remove the fabric on the backrest and arms of the couch. Why bother removing the fabric from the bottom when it was just going to end up in the dumpster?  I also saved the buttons to reuse them for this project.

After exposing the wood, I roughly marked where I wanted to cut the couch.

Action shot with my new favorite tool, a Japanese style pull saw.

Here's the couch, now officially in two pieces. I ended up salvaging the three front legs, some of the foam and some straight pieces of wood from the bottom part of the couch. You never know when you'll need random scrap pieces of wood.

Here are the buttons I salvaged. I just painted them with two coats of acrylic gold paint.

I used some of the extra foam from the other side of the couch to fill in some of the spaces and to cover the exposed wood.

The fabric I used ended up being some fabric I got at a thrift store market thing down the road from me. I forget the exact price I paid for it, but it was obscenely cheap. Like about $5 for a bolt that had a little more than 8 yards of upholstery fabric on it kind of cheap.

My first tufting project. It started off kind of difficult, but I got the hang of it after a while.

Done with the tufting and the fabric is all stapled down. Now it's time for the side pieces.

I used the old fabric side pieces to create a pattern, but since halfway down the sides there would normally be arms of the couch, there was no more of the old fabric to make a pattern from so I had to do some drapery work to figure out how exactly to cover the rest of the sides. I also recovered the old piping from the side pieces with the fabric I was using. Conveniently for me, whoever made the couch used way more piping than they needed originally for the side pieces and it actually ended up being the perfect amount of piping for the new size of the sides.

And here it is finished in my messy living room!

Here it is in the room! Now I definitely need to buy some new sheets. I'm extremely happy with how it turned out and even though this isn't technically a tutorial post, I hope it was educational for you guys! :)

Drawing on mugs is fun!

So this post today is for two reasons.  First and foremost, I made some kickin' rad one of a kind mugs.  I got this idea thanks to craftster, roboarsonist.  She used a ceramic paint pen by Pebeo called Porcelaine 150 and used it to draw some designs on a few mugs.  Once I saw that I knew I had to try it.  I went to Michaels and grabbed myself one pen and then to Goodwill to grab up some mugs and then went to town on them.  Well, actually only two of them so far... and here they are!

I really like doing this, although I think next time I'll get the actual paint instead of the paint pen.. The pen kept getting clogged and it was harder to get a nice consistent line with it.  I'll post more about the paint after I get myself some.

So the second thing this post is about is that I finally started an Etsy store.  It's kind of baren right now because I've been busy with school and stuff, but stuff will slowly trickle in as I have spare time to make stuff.  I'm going to add these two mugs on it as well. :)

Here's a link to my little store:

chezlin.etsy.com

UPDATE: I moved my store from Etsy over to Storenvy! The new store is located at: http://chezlin.storenvy.com/

I still have a lot of work to do on it, but I thought it was time to show you all!

Baby quilts galore!

Well actually, not galore.. because there's only two, but you get the idea!  When two of my friends told me they were pregnant, after the initial shock wore away, I got excited to make them baby quilts.  I was hoping that at least one of them would have a girl, so I could make a cute girls quilt, but I had no such luck for they were both having boys.  That didn't stop me from making two cute quilts though!

Here's the first one:

My little sister is holding it up here.

All ready to give away!

Here's the second one:

The colors are a little off here.

Close up shot of it folded up.

All ready to go!  I think this one shows the true colors the best.

As you can see, they're not perfect, but they're good enough for me!  These were the first quilts I've ever done.. and although it's kind of frustrating and time consuming (even when I did these super easy ones!) I think I'm hooked.  I want to make a quilt for my bed but I'm kind of scared I'll never finish it, haha.