Crafting Queen

So lately I've found a new addiction.  Thankfully this addiction won't kill me.  I'm addicted to Pinterest, a new social community of sorts.  There are tons of ideas for household stuff you can make, brilliant things I never would have had the imagination to think of on my own.  But with a little insight and a picture I'm totally stoked to be crafty!  A lot of the stuff they suggest is made from old things that most would think is garbage.  Up until recently this girl would have been included in that statement.  Now I find myself slowing down at curbsides and stalking through someone's garbage (then sending Gage out to retrieve it).

The first project I decided to tackle was a doggy bed made out of a hexigonal 1970/80's side table.  We all recognize the style of table I'm speaking of.  It has a door on the front and it's got wood laminate all over it.  Overall, ugly.   So I found this sweet score in a pile of garbage after dropping Gage off at school.

I took the door off, the top off and I peeled off all the fake wood laminate and primed this out-dated puppy (no pun intended).  Then I gave it a couple good coats of semi-gloss white paint and taped out and painted some lime green stripes (to match Margie's living room).  Then once I got the colour on, I added foam letters spelling out Elliott's (the dog) name down the side and then painted over them.  I also added some dog prints in white along the top green stripe.  Then I hit up Fabricland and found some navy blue polk-a-dot flannel and used the top piece of the original table to cut out the pattern for the actual dog bed.  I borrowed my mom's sewing machine and stitched the bed and tore apart an old throw pillow for stuffing.  Then I finished it off with a big round white button in the centre of the bed.  

Roan said it looked like I bought the dog bed, so that must be a good thing right?  I'm pretty impressed with how my first craft turned out and I'm really looking forward to making something else.  Roan wants to keep our eyes open for other hexigon side tables so we can make one for our kitties since they seemed to like it.  Roan found Shakespeare laying in it before we delivered it to Margaret and Elliott. 


So it seemed Margaret liked the bed, but Elliott was a little wound up from Roan to actually test it out.  I hope he takes a liking to it.  He would look super cute in it.  So all in all, I had the white paint from my bedroom baseboards, the green paint from the walls in Gage's bedroom, I made the paw stencil our of hardboard in my recycle bin, I used the stuffing out of an old pillow for the bed but I bought the foam letters, the white button and the material for the bed.  All in all this project cost me 20 bucks and I have leftover letters for another project and leftover flannel material that I'll find a use for later.  I'm pleased with the end result.  Check it out!  What do you think??

Finished doggie bed!!