Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Feathery

Over the past few days I decided that I needed to start making changes in my life. Some deep, some shallow. This is one of the lighter on my list.



This bad boy sits in the corner of my bedroom and is one of the first things I see every morning. Its looking mighty raggedy. When we first bought it, it was fresh, natural and beautiful. I LOVED it. After months of rough man usage and little boy spiderman jumps it looks like hell. I thought about just buying another natural one but I figured it would only be a matter of time before I was back to funk again. So, I explored the colored ones at Ikea. UMMMM...natural slipcovers $30, colored slipcovers $50. Are they crazy? $20 MORE FOR COLOR? No way jose. And the colors were ugly. Im sorry...I'll dye it myself.

So thats what I did. I bought the natural, I bought some dye and dyed my slipcover and waalah.

My chair came out like this...



Pretty right? I like being able to see the legs like in the first pic so I might hem the slipcover, but I havent decided. I used RIT dye. I ended up having to use 3 boxes to get it this color brown. It first came out a lighter brown and I wasnt at all thrilled. Then it came out a darker brown but it looked almost ashy. It needed one more round' in the washer with some dye to get a little richness. I think it could stand to be a little darker but I just cant dye it again. I dont have it in me. This will do. It looks nice. The perfectionist in me is just going to have to shut up on this one. Its quite nice the way it is.

Now for that feathery beauty. You see that lovely pillow in the picture? This ikea slipcover comes with a cover for the standard ikea pillow. It's small, plain and BORING. I saw something on pinterest that inspired me to paint this feathery little number on this pillow. Yupp, I painted that myself. I bought fabric paint for $2 and a fabric brush for $2 and painted a feather on it. You like? Here's a close up. Thats $4. Pretty charming if I must say so myself and it's actually really soft and machine washable.



Heres what I spent on that mini makeover:
Slipcover $30
Dye $6.75 (2.25 a box, I bought 3)
Fabric Paint $2
Fabric Brush $2
=$40.75

Thats less then I would have spent just on a colored slipcover at Ikea AND I got a pretty fancy new pillow. All in a days work. Gotta love a little dye and fabric paint.