One Crafty Mommy: Trading Tuesdays

March 9, 2010

Trading Tuesdays

Welcome to the first Trading Tuesdays! This is when I swap blogs with a fellow blogger. So go check me out @Dots Azules and give a warm welcome to Stina!

Hello crafty moms and new friends! My name is Stina and today I'm am so excited to be doing a blogswap with Shannon and getting to share a recent project with you all.

I love things to be beautiful, but I also believe that beauty should have a reasonable price! I love garage sale shopping, Craigslisting, getting a good bargain...AND using what I have already. Make it known to friends and family that you're always looking for materials for crafts and you will be surprised what they will share with you! Old furniture, left over paint, light fixtures that you can paint and reuse...just think of the possibilities!

Today's project was helping my cousin G with a set of vinyl children's couches that she got at a garage sale.

I'm sure the people selling them had considered just throwing them out since the seats were torn and dirty. Well, G saw the potential, got them, cleaned them up and gave me a call.

She had considered taking them all teh way apart, removing the vinyl, recovering the wooden frame with new stuffing and then using som awesome chocolate brown upholstry material...and maybe some of you would be up for that task...but I am a "Get it done quick" kind of crafter so we cut patterns out of some scrap cloth of how we thought we could cover them whole using two pieces of cloth. We used dowells that we cut to fit in the cracks between the sides of the chairs and the seat cushion.

You can see one sticking out here (they were completely hidden when we were done). These held the fabric to the seat in place. Then we used a staple gun to attach the fabric to the back and underneath. We also got some nice furniture tacks from Lowes for the back, they helped to keep the fabric flat as well as added something extra to the chairs.

I loved this project because we took some old chairs that were on their last leg and gave them new life to be enjoyed by a new family, we did it quickly (becuase we all already have TOO MUCH to do in our lives) and we did it cheap (because there are enough things eating away at the checkbook without letting our love of projects and decor add to it)!