Living 6 and a half hours away from State College, PA, I knew I had to make my new room as cozy and home-like as could be. To do this, I decided to turn to the wise, wonderful, and crafty bloggers of Pinterest. I began searching for fun, easy, and cheap DIYs that would not only tie together my style, but allow my room to stand out as more than a stuffy dorm. I created a board (or a file) specifically filled with these crafts and decided that, with the help of my grandmother (whom I loving call Galeighga), I would build a temporary headboard! The inspiration and instructional video of which comes from youtube.com blogger, jordynrebeccaXO.
Here is a link to the original post on Pinterest.
After watching the video, I dragged by Galeighga to the local Michael’s and Joann Fabrics to buy all the supplies I needed:
- Fabric Mod Podge
- a paint brush
- 6 or 9 blank, 12″ by 16″ canvases
- 3-6 different fabrics that you want for your color scheme (avoid burlap materials because excess fibers will cause issues)
- a staple gun
- scissors
- pencil
- optional mode of securing the canvases once finished (I’ll come back to this later)
- small nails, hammar
- and picture hanging wire
Once I got all of my supplies, I began to cover the canvases with the fabric I chose. In order to do this, I covered the blank front with mod podge and tightly wrapped the measured out fabric around (pattern obviously facing up). Then (carefully) using a staple gun, I went along the back of the canvass and stapled the excess fabric to the back, making a stronger seal.
Here is a picture of us working on this step!
Once the canvasses had dried (overnight), we assembled them in the pattern I wanted (in a 2 by 3 pattern) and we stapled the back sides together once more with a staple gun. At this point, I noticed how flimsy the full sized headboard was, so we decided to secure it better with a thinner wood board (about an inch wide and a 1/4 inch thick) and a hammer and nails. I will admit that my father did this step because my handyman skills are lacking. We (he) had nailed the boards in along the seems of the fabric covered canvases in a way that ensured the strength and stability of the full headboard.
This is not the only way to attach the canvasses together however. You could also use Velcro along the sides of each canvass, or a glue specialized for wood. I personally preferred the wood board method (obviously) because to me it seemed a bit more secure.
It was when we got to Penn State that my dad did the final step of attaching picture hanging wire to the headboard by wrapping it securely around the exposed areas of the wooden board. He gave it just enough slack to be hung on a wall with a command hook (each hook I used can only support 5 pounds so I used two hooks just to be sure it didn’t fall). And then it was done! And it looked beautiful 🙂
All in all the project took me about 3 days with drying time and assembly and it cost me about $30 for all of the materials. I would say that it was a fun and successful DIY (once I had help from crafty/handy family members).
Scale of 1-10 and $-$$$$$:
- Easiness- 6
- Fun- 8
- Time- 5
- Price- $$
Final Product:
Jonah Kim says
The concept of your blog is very creative and very artsy, NOT BASIC at all! I respect this work I am way too impatient to even attempt such a project. I was not expecting to read a blog like this and I mean that in the nicest way. Clearly from this topic itself you are creative so the style is one of a kind.
amb6829 says
I really like this blog! I feel like you will be able to do so much with the topic at hand. Your headboard looks professional, and it probably cost a lot less doing it yourself then if you would have bought the headboard yourself. This type of project would be much harder for me then it appears to be for you, and I doubt I could even produce something that I felt okay with posting on the internet. Good job, and this seems like it will be a very interesting blog!