Pregnancy Week 34: DIY Reupholstered Glider + Mounted Painted Mason Jars + Washi Tape Phone Case Makeover

Everything has been fairly quiet in pregnancy land. I go in for another prenatal appointment on Tuesday so I may have some more updates then. For now, everything is going smoothly! At 34 weeks, most babies are 19-22 inches long and weigh around 4.9 pounds. They estimated baby girl to be 4.5 pounds at 32 weeks, so 4.9 seems about right. She is about the size of a pineapple, and boy howdy do I believe it. My right ribs feel like they're going to bust.

With E's pregnancy, I had my baby shower around this time. We played a game where everyone cut a piece of yarn that they guessed was how big around I was at my widest point. Whoever was the closest won. The winner was smack on with my belly. I found the string in an old purse during one of my many nesting/cleaning episodes. I am slightly smaller this time around. Here are the comparison pictures. E on the left; this pregnancy on the right. My belly was much rounder and cute looking with E.

DIY Projects

I have the craft bug. I have it bad. I finished reupholstering the glider this week. I found a used one I liked for $30. I liked the glider itself anyway; the fabric had to go and the cushions needed adjusting because the top sloped funny. I ended up buying $30 in new fabric to reupholster it. I got too much (surprise), but I would rather have too much than not enough. Plus, $60 for a glider is a heck of a deal since most of them cost more than twice that amount.

This glider was a little more complicated to reupholster than the one I did for E's room. This glider had a base cushion with multiple pieces of fabric rather than one solid piece. I am way too lazy for that nonsense. So I got my seam ripper and tore that fabric off completely. That left me with one piece of foam.

I took the seam ripper to the top piece as well because it had a thick cord all the way around that I did not like. I was going to undo the seams holding together the individual pieces on the top, but that turned out to be way more cumbersome than expected. So I left it intact and just made a slip cover for it instead. I removed the velcro pieces that attach the cushions to the back of the glider and sewed them onto my new fabric once I was done. Here is the before and after.

I also made some changes to the hanging painted mason jars. I decided I didn't like them hanging from the ceiling. I already have two mobiles (one over the crib and one over the changing table), so it felt like too much. The jars also wouldn't stay facing the direction I wanted, so I decided to mount them instead.

I got a piece of wood from Michaels for dirt cheap ($3.60 after using the 40% off coupon they always have on their website). I also got some tube straps, screws, and worm clamps from Lowes. That was about $5. I eyeballed where I wanted the jars to go, then measured it to make sure I spaced the jars evenly. I placed the worm clamp inside the tube straps and screwed them into place. Then I adjusted the worm clamps until they were tight around the mason jars. I hid the actual clamp part near the back since it's the prettiest looking.

The piece of wood came with twine attached to the back already, so it was easy to hang up on the wall. This is a pretty versatile project. Instead of flowers/decor, you can use it in the bathroom to hold makeup/supplies or in an office to hold pens, pencils, etc. It would also be cute for a craft room to hold paint brushes, knitting needles, and so on.

My last small craft was more for functionality than anything else. Hubs and I both got new phones recently. Our cases are identical and he kept accidentally taking my phone. I tried a few DIYs to distinguish the cases from one and other, but I never cared much for the outcome. Then I discovered washi tape. Or, more accurately, mylar tape. Washi tape with scuff and fade with time since the design is on the outside.

The mylar tape I have is metallic and the color portion is on the inside of the tape. Since I wrapped it all the way around the case to hide the edges behind the phone, it is easy to tell our cases apart from the back as well as the front. Here is the final result.

Reupholstering the Hope Chest

Now that we're all settled into our new house, I decided I should probably decorate it. The bathrooms are complete, the walls now have art, the table has a tablecloth, and the beds have bed spreads and throw pillows. So I decided to actually get to work on our bedroom because it is irritating me to no end. The bed sits on the floor, had no head board, no side tables and the hope chest needed reupholstering. So, first project on the list was to get the feet for the bed. However, it takes a couple of weeks for them to get here so in the mean time, it's reupholstering season.

The hope chest had a print on it from when my mom redecorated my room in a floral theme. The colors actually could have worked, but there was a massive grease stain on it plus a brownish splotch (like soda had been spilled on it or something), so it had to go.

So here is the old hope chest:

Grease Stain:

And here are all the things I needed for the jog: solid fabric, lace fabric, scissors, screw driver, and a staple gun w/staples.

I got my fabric at the old Walmart, where they cut it down to the size I needed, so I only needed to trim a bit of excess fabric. I centered my headboard fabric side down. I pulled the fabric up and folded the frayed edge under. I notice a lot of people don't do this step on their DIY projects; they just tug and staple. I'm sure it's fine in most cases, but if you have a delicate fabric or a really frayed edge, your staples can pull lose if you don't double it over. Anyway, put one staple on each side to secure and then staple all the way around like so:

you may have noticed the funny corners, how astute of you. here will always be a pleat when you fold corners. There is no real "method" of how to do it, just fold it until you find a way you like then repeat it on all four corners. You may need to cut away some of the excess fabric to make this easier (just make sure you leave enough to fold over to the back).

Since I had two layers of fabric, I didn't mind too much what the bottom layer corners looked like:

Then I repeated the process with the lace:

Then I screwed the lip back on and voila! The green is more noticeable in person, but I'm happy with it :)