me and jilly: bedroom details, part one

I'm going to have to split this post into two separate entries. Because when you go from this:

To this:

There are lots of details to discuss!

The inspiration of this bedroom was born around this headboard I got at a second-hand furniture store for $35.

With the help of my dear friends, Cara and G {the dreamy girls of Club Project}, the headboard was transformed into a masterpiece that is definitely the focal point of the bedroom. I went to my local upholstery shop where my friend let me use his button making machine to cover dozens of heavy duty brad buttons. That step saved us hours of time. If you are upholstering something with lots of tufting, I would highly suggest you find an upholstery shop and do the same. These button type brads are so much more heavy duty than anything you can buy at a regular store.

After it was upholstered, it ended up being too thick to go back in the frame comfortably, so (naturally) Melanie had a solution that worked perfectly! She used her hand-held router and created a little ledge along the backside of the frame for the upholstered piece to nestle into. We also cut the legs off so I could hang it with a french cleat at whatever height I wanted.

Meanwhile, Jaci and I had painted stripes (a year previous) and I had found a remnant piece of navy carpet at my local carpet store, Mesa Sales. Often, they have large remnants and their prices are really good. This piece is 12' x 12' and cost $125. Since this carpet had a relatively high pile, I didn't even have to have the edges bound because the sides of the carpet hang over the raw edge and you can't tell it's an unfinished edge.

Mia showed up on Thanksgiving morning with the custom navy and white pillow shams that she sewed right up for me. We had gone shopping a few days before and found the fabric at one of our favorite ghetto stores, SAS, for $3.99 a yard. The shams are backed with a solid aqua blue, and Mia did a beautiful job on them. Try not to be jealous that she's my best friend and we started sewing our own clothes in 7th grade. The gray pillowcases have a tiny white dot on the them and they are made out of a dreamy material that makes it hard for Jaci to get up every morning! I bought them at Tuesday Mornings. The white with green polka dot pillows were on clearance at Home Goods for $11 each.

I scored the ruched duvet cover at one of my favorite stores here in Phoenix called Last Chance. It retails for over $200 and I picked it up for a cool $19.97. It adds some femininity and softness to the room.

I found the DKNY bedskirt at Goodwill for a few bucks and used some fabric glue to attach the fun blue and white striped trim. It's a great way to add something extra for very little money.

The nightstands were both battered little pieces that were the same scale. I actually painted the one on the right about a year ago and detailed the process{here}. It was a fun find a good friend brought back from Scotland for me.

The other one was a $10 thrift store treasure that was close to the same scale as the one I had. Painting them the same color created unification but keeps the look interesting because they are different.

For her 16th birthday, Andrew gave Jaci the guitar that took him through college. (oh if that guitar could talk!) We hung it on the wall using {this} tutorial I found via Pinterest. It's really nice to have it off the floor and safely hung.

The wall art? That was a little brainchild of mine, but when I finally got around to actually doing it (a year later), I saw that it had already been done on Pinterest! (and done WELL, I might add!) I'm still claiming I made it up. (although clearly I didn't?) Maybe the part I DID make up was the use of paint sticks. The girl on Pinterest used balsa wood, which would have cost me around $40 for my project. Balsa wood would have been great to work with because it is super light and you can cut it with a pair of scissors, no saws needed. But I have a saw and didn't want to spend the extra money, so I rounded up around 100 paint sticks and started cutting.

I cut the curved handle end off of each one, and cut the other end at a 45 degree angle. I cut half of the angles one way, then changed my saw to cut the angle 45 degrees the other way. Since two pieces are coming together in the middle, they have to be cut opposite so they form a V. You want to make sure that they are all the exact same finished size, too.

My sweet sister came over one night and we painted all of them in bright, fun colors. We left a few of them raw, just to break up all the color. Don't forget to paint all the sides, too!

After they were painted, I invited Mia and G to come over for a stick assembly party. It took all three of us an entire evening to decide what colors should go together to get a fun look, but one that didn't look like a haphazard, hot mess.

Once they were all laid out to our liking, we used a hot glue gun and some plain paint sticks to attach them together along the backside. I also got some wood scraps in different depths to make some of them pop off the wall just a bit to give more of a 3-D look. It looks much more interesting than if they were all laying flat against the wall. I twisted some wire to make little hangers and used a glue gun to secure them to the tops of each piece.

If you're interested in recreating this, you'd better work on becoming besties with the folks behind the paint counters at Lowes and Home Depot so you can snag yourselves a load of paint sticks. This is a great, big impact art piece for little to no money that anyone can do!

The quote on the wall was thought up by none other than Mia. She designed it and traced it onto the wall for me. G showed up ready to help and we hand painted it for hours.....and hours. It was SO hard to paint on that textured wall and get straight, crisp lines.