repurposed

Upcycled Rustic Initial Carved Headboard

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When we redid some of our garden space we had some leftover 1 X 8 boards.

Santanna’s bed does not have a frame and these boards have been sitting under the deck for almost 2 years, giving them a great distressed patina.

As Jon and I were talking about how to cut up…or not…the boards and how we attend to arrange them to go over her full size bed I fell more in love with the look.

I decided instead, they would go in our room…over our king sized bed.

We had taken off an outdated headboard and have also been discussing how to upcycle that one.

Headboards are apparently a big deal at our house..who knew.

I wanted to headboard to go past the bed a little so that when the bed is made the headboard would extend at least the length of the bed + bedding, the headboard is a total of 96 inches and goes about 6 inches past the bed/bedding.

Headboard

The back of this headboard has 3 1 X 4 boards placed so the end 2 can attach to the metal be frame and one in the middle for support, you could use 2 X 4 or even 4 X 4 board for the “legs” if you want to change the look, I wanted a sleek profile, plus we had all the boars for this in the garage making it FREE.

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When I was dreaming up Santanna’s headboard I had some thoughts about drawing some sort of graphic on it, she still might get a headboard so I won’t spill those thoughts yet.

I thought a saying that might fit, but honestly there was not one that I LOVED, so I thought how about a carving?

Aha!  Initials in a tree….Awwww..right?!?

SO I used our generic Dremel tool, which I think I killed while doing this and carve d our initials, First name and Middle initial, per Hubby’s request.

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It looks rustic which is great, this was not as easy as I thought it would be, hence some minor imperfections, but I do love the way it turned out.

I did not carve the heart; I painted and sanded all of the heart and initials to give it an aged look.

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On the other side I added the year we were married in paint, I did many different layers and wanted that too look aged as well, I am not sure that it is exactly how I pictured it in my mind, but I can’t say how often my vision and the end product correspond.

Plus it is more discreet then the carving.

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I have to say we are loving this, and that is was FREE from some repurposed garden boards makes it feel special.

 

 

 

Repurposed Puzzle Snail Mail Letters

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It seems to me like all we ever get in the mail are bills, magazines, political propaganda (which I think is over now, thank goodness), and an occasional party invite.

In my sometimes old fashioned nostalgia I encourage our kids to send letters to friends or family.  Santanna is especially fond of making letters and pictures for her little friends.  Who does not like to receive a fun piece of mail personally addressed to them in ink??

Our friends daughter,  who I wrote about previously  who is battling brain cancer, is getting an overwhelming amount of mail, letters and packages, guess who feels a little left out/angry about not getting any mail?  Little sister Elsa.  So, her mom grudgingly asked if we could help a girl out and send some snail mail Elsa’s way.  I think we all know how hard it can be to actually ask for help when you need it right?!

This got me thinking, we needed to blow up this girls snail mail box, how many pictures was Tanna willing to color?

Then it came to me, a puzzle letter:

Here is what we did:

  1.  Went to savers (you might have one of these not being used at home as well, we recycled this one, you might be able to repurpose your own),  bought this puzzle.

2.  We put the puzzle together upside down. This is harder then you think wihtout picture clues.

3. I helped Santanna write a letter and she drew whatever and decotared whatever she wanted in Sharpie and Crayola markers.

       4.     I included instructions with the first envelope.

       5. Then we took the puzzle about, mixed it all up and I got out my postal scale for mailing packages and we weighed each one equal to/less than an ounce.  For this puzzle it was about 5 pieces per envelope.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 I am so excited for her friend to get this, she is going to be thrilled, plus it gives her something to look forward too.

I think I am also going to do this when the big kids are at camp for the summer.