Better In An Hour: Easy upholstery

Behold, our ugly red vinyl footstool. (Forgot to take a
photo rightside-up.)

UPHOLSTERY FOR LAZY PEOPLE 

It's been a while since we did a DIY crafty post, but don't fret: since we're getting the keys to our new house on Tuesday. Here's a small project that saved a little footstool from the trash:

Behold, my ugly footstool. Find your own similarly-shaped piece of furniture--a footstool, a padded stool, or something else entirely. This style of upholstering won't work as well on, say, a stuffed couch; look for something smaller, with a wood base to receive the staples.

YOU WILL NEED
-an old piece of furniture (ie footstool)
-a staple gun and staples
-a piece of fabric
-scissors
-foam, yoga mat, or other padding

First, we cut the yoga mat up. We used an old, thin, unappealing yoga mat to add padding to the stool, as the original padding was worn down to nothing. We cut three ovals of yoga mat out with a pair of scissors after tracing the footstool onto it. This step took 5 minutes.












Next, we stacked those onto the stool; we then took our piece of fabric and put it on top. Then we flipped the stool over, and began stapling the fabric to the bottom of the stool. This step took 15 minutes.

You'll likely need to keep adjusting your foam/yoga mat pieces to make sure they haven't shifted out of position. There's a knack to going around turns or corners, too: create tiny, intentional folds, and staple them down. On the straightaways, you can just go straight and tight.

Lots of staples for a secure attachment!

Cut off any excess, add any staples you need to, and hammer in any staples that didn't quite jab all the way into the wood. This step took 5 minutes.

And there you have it! A much more attractive footstool than the one you started out with!   And, in total, this entire project took 25 minutes. Now, at some point we will be painting the legs, which I estimate will take another 30 minutes to properly sand, prime, and paint.

Not bad, eh!

Simple, easy, and good for us lazy people. Just my kind of DIY makeover.

Better In An Hour: scrapbook paper shelf

The unchanging LACK shelf from IKEA. (ikea.com)

Listen, I love IKEA as much as the next urban 25 to 35 year-old, but sometimes that modern-looking table or bookcase ends up looking totally wrong when you get it home. Or, as is usually my experience, it works with the look you set for apartment A, but by apartment C it just looks dumb. Thus, I have been carrying around this ugly black LACK shelf from Ikea for two apartments.

Our new place needed a shelf, to hold my teddy bear collection. Yes, I’m thirty and still I have a teddy bear collection. I have a love of anything furry, and the bears I’ve kept—pared down from about five dozen—all have special memories attached to them. But I acknowledge that they can’t all sleep in bed with me anymore, so they need a place of honor where I can admire them…and where I may occasionally grab one for a cuddle, if he’s looking lonely.

This Better In An Hour post is so simple, I’m going to put the photos in and use the captions to tell you the steps. My only warning to you is this: think it through before you start. I had to restart this project halfway through when I realized I grabbed the wrong stack of scrapbook paper and, while still pretty, the shelf was no longer going to be on theme. The trick to working quickly is READY – AIM – FIRE.

YOU WILL NEED:

Scrapbook paper

Modpodge or other gel medium (we used fancy acrylic gel medium because it was laying around.)

An ugly shelf to cover over

A razor blade

Any embellishments you desire.

First step:sand the shelf with a coarse sandpaper.
This step took 5 minutes.

Next: Apply your modpodge/gel to an area, then lay down a sheet of scrapbook paper.
Note: you'll need to use a spoon or other softly rounded object to push out bubbles.Then brush more gel
over the face of the paper to seal it.
This step took 20 minutes.

Realize you used the wrong paper, and tear it off frantically.
Skip this 10-minute step.

Finish laying down all the sheets and fold the edges down over the edge of the shelf.

Paper the underside of the shelf as well. Bend the extra over the edges as well.
You will then decide which sheet of paper you want to put over the other along the edge.
Glue the flaps down. This step took 7 minutes.

 Et, voila! We have a lovely shelf for the bears to sit on, perfect in our folkart-y bedroom. Just a note: if you are indeed using an IKEA shelf (the LACK one), be sure to keep track of where the screw heads are; these screws, built into the underside of the shelf, are part of the bracket system. I glued the paper right over the top of ours, and Brian had to use a magnet to find them again.

So, if you take out the total muck-up I did with the wrong scrapbook paper, this project took a total of 42 minutes! (Note that I took an extra 5 minutes to put some green rickrack along the edge of my shelf.) And because we had our gel on hand, it only cost us about $9.00 in paper. And I never have to look at that hideous black veneer surface again. Win, win, win.

Better in an hour: framed greeting cards!

FRAMED GREETING CARDS: THE CHEAP, EASY, AND SCRAPBOOKY WAY.

I wasn’t expecting to do another of these posts so soon, but I shouldn’t really have been surprised: with a hectic work week schedule, plus all the extracurricular activities that Brian and I get up to, it makes sense that many of our home makeover projects would take an hour or less to finish. The lengthier ones are coming, I know…but for now, these little projects make me feel like we’re getting somewhere with our new place.

Today, I will show you how to make a lovely piece of art out of a greeting card or other small print, without the expense of professional framing. For our project, I used two greeting cards designed by Ottawa’s Mad Mother Designs. We love the Edith Died Laughing series, and have wanted to frame these two adorable cards for a while, but were having the hardest time finding attractive frames of the right size. I had given up for a long time, figuring the right idea would come to me…and it did.

YOU WILL NEED:

-greeting card(s) you want to frame

-cool paper. We used scrapbooking paper left over from our wedding.

-scissors or an Xacto knife

-ruler

-tape

-string

First, I found two mats. These can be expensive, but you can find them in old picture frames; some really cheap, ugly, and even broken frames can provide you with lovely mats. In my case, I had made these two in high school: in grade twelve, I had a teacher who made us make mats for every piece. I hated it, because it’s miserable slow math-heavy work, so that’s why I’m encouraging you to find old mats instead of making your own. If time is money, your time is worth more than all the work it takes to cut a mat. So…I freed my old mats from the high school lino prints they’d been holding. Separating the mats from the prints took 5 minutes.

Paper lined up on the mat.

Next, I went through my stack of cool papers and chose two that had a Victorian feel, to match the greeting cards. When you see scrapbook paper on sale, grab a sheet or two; it’s a simple thing to store neatly away, and if you’re crafting you will, guaranteed, find uses for it. I picked one for each card. This would act as the backdrop to fill in the space around the card that was left empty by the oversized mat. I then cut the paper to be about the size of the mat’s empty middle, plus a minimum of .5” on each side. This is important for easy taping. Cutting the paper took 5 minutes.

Next, I taped the paper in place. This can actually be tricky. You want to be sure that, if there’s a repeating pattern on your paper with vertical and/or horizontal lines in it, they should line up in the frame correctly. If you mount your sheet of paper a little crooked, you will really notice if, like the black paper I used, you have clear light horizontal lines suddenly running slightly on a diagonal. I like to place a small piece of tape on the back of the paper and mat, then flip it over and double check how it looks. Once it looks right, tape all four sides of the paper into the mat. Checking and taping the paper took 5 minutes.

The next step was to prepare the greeting card. These cards have an artfully frayed edge on the opening side, which is a nice design bonus. I used tape to tape the card shut—I don’t want to risk any buckling of the paper by using glue, and while a glue stick won’t cause buckling, it will dry up and eventually stop working. Tape is just best, and I always prefer good ol’ fashioned, nasty sticky super-clear tape. Not that ‘magic tape’ nonsense. Who is it magic for? People who like sandy-textured plasticky unsticky tape, that’s who. I taped the card shut by making tape loops and sticking them inside the card. You are now ready to centre the card (carefully, now!) and tape it down to the scrapbook paper. I used loops of the super-clear tape for this. Taping the cards closed, plus taping the cards to the backdrop, took 5 minutes.

And lastly, we prepare the piece for hanging. Simply, I took some yarn (cut from the fringe of a scarf, as I didn’t want to go find my knitting box), made two fat knots, one in each end. I then tape the string behind the mat, being sure to have the knots either taped, or sticking out the far side of the tape. The knot will help the yarn not slip through the tape and let go. If it keeps slipping, you can tie a toothpick or piece of straw to the end of the string and tape that to the mat instead…anything that adds some grip. Stringing the piece took 3 minutes.

And voila, you are done. You now have a really cool piece of art that you can hang and enjoy. Finally, a greeting card that won’t moulder in your desk drawer. Oh, and best of all: next time you’re at an art gallery or museum and see a cool piece you wish you could own, this is a nifty way to have a small print of it at home. Some of you may be collecting Artist Trading Cards; this may be a lovely way to display your favourites. This entire project took 23 minutes!

One more bonus tip for you: if your piece hangs crooked no matter how many times you adjust it, tape a dime or penny to the edge that’s hanging high. With our crooked apartment, I can tell you that there are various pictures around here that now have bolts, quarters, and buttons taped to their edges. Ah, the joy of old houses. Our bookshelves are also shifted on one side by pieces of moving boxes.

Better in an hour: shelves can be cute!

BETTER IN AN HOUR: THE KNICKNACK SHELVES ARE FINISHED.

As we work on our nest, I’ve discovered I have finished (or am halfway through) a number of brief projects that don’t quite seem to have enough ‘meat’ to them to make them into a blog post. So I’m starting a series called Better in an Hour. These are projects that take approximately an hour (maybe less, maybe slightly more), but make a huge impact on your living space. Today we will look at the shelves we just put up in the living room.

YOU WILL NEED:

-pieces of wood

-brackets

-screws

-tools

-paint and paintbrush

-glue gun, glue

-ribbon

-an hour, broken up into smaller segments

First, we went out and bought some wood at Home Depot. I find that proper shelves are really expensive, don’t you? And why?! What distinguishes one piece of wood from the next? What distinguishes the shelf from the board? I would argue: nothing does. So because it was the cheapest thing we found in the size we wanted, we bought two pieces of stair case wood. I’m sure it has a fancier name, but if you’re looking for it, that’s where we found it. It’s thick, non-warping plywood, with a paintable veneer on both sides. If you find a nice piece of solid pine or something, great…but with the final step of this project, we’re going to make the plywood look fantastic. Buying the boards took 10 minutes.

 

We took the boards home, and I painted them with the same paint we were using that day on the bedroom. I like to use house paint (versus art or craft paint) on household things because it holds up better; if you don’t have any lying around, look at the mistinted paints at your local hardware store. You can get a gallon for around six bucks, and there’s often tons of cool colours because people buy it, take it home, and realize no one should paint a whole room that colour. But since you’re going to use it on accents and furniture, it’s a win-win for you. Painting the boards took 10 minutes—doing two coats.

Once the boards dried, I got Brian to mount them on the wall. Mounting shelves is a whole tutorial in itself, but a boring one, so I’ll skip it here. Suffice it to say, watch a youtube video and no—don’t wing it. One tip: remember that if you have two shelves close together, you’ll want to mount their brackets the same way so it looks visually correct. Don’t put two brackets, six inches in, on one shelf, then put three brackets, four inches in, on the other. Get it? Good. Mounting the shelves took 30 minutes.

After Brian finished cursing, swearing, and fighting with the mounting job, I warmed up my glue gun, pulled out some ribbon I had, and began gluing the ribbon around the ugly plywood edge of the shelves. I aligned the edge of the ribbon with the edge of the shelf; because my ribbon is slightly wider than the wood, there’s a bit of a ribbon ‘lip’ on the bottom edge. But this doesn’t matter, because the ribbon is still flush with the top edge of the shelf, so things won’t snag on the ribbon as they’re added or removed from display. Gluing the ribbon took 10 minutes.

Give or take a few minutes for buying the ribbon—but I had bought mine while I was already out shopping—this project took 60 minutes. The result: we have two cute shelves where we can display some of our lovely oddities. The rocks, by the way, are from places I’ve travelled, plus places my friends have travelled. You can call me nerdy, but I say geology rocks. Wink!