DIY Faux Metal Cat Bed Tutorial – Upcycled Magazines
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Hello there. Welcome to the Lab!
It’s a place where trash is reimagined, furniture repaired, clothing re-fashioned and four-legged creatures reign supreme. Lately, the dogs have been doing their best to keep me busy with fixing multiple pieces of furniture including but not limited to chairs, our couch, and a footstool.
So it’s high time that the cats received a little attention. To that end, and because of the unsightly nature of the status quo, I decided to make a new bed for the cats.
Exhibit A – The current cat bed.
Now I admit my standards aren’t really that high after all I do make a lot of things from trash but believe it or not the sloppy nature of the current bed was too much even for my non-discerning taste and therefore I set out to make some improvements.
When you start with such a low bar it is difficult not to succeed and so I have deemed my project a success even with its obvious shortcomings. 🙃
You of course will have to judge for yourself as to the projects merit or worthiness.
This project uses the following supplies.
- Large piece of Corrugated Cardboard
- A couple of old Magazines
- A piece of old Mattress Foam
- An unwanted T- shirt
- Hot glue
- Mod Podge (because I use this stuff on almost all of my projects)
- Silver Spray Paint
- Black Craft Paint
- Fiber Fill or recycled pillow stuffing
Step 1 – Determine size and shape and cut out base and padding pieces
You can make the bed any size a shape by cutting the cardboard and foam to the desired dimensions. I decided on an oval shape for my basket.
Step 2 – Roll and weave magazine paper
The magazine paper is rolled into tubes to be used to make the vertical and the horizontal rows of the weave which is held together with the hot glue. The process starts out in a very unruly mess but as the weaving progresses the shape becomes easier to work with. I also used some rubber bands to hold the paper tubes out of the way.
Step 3 – Finish and Paint
Once I finished weaving, I decided to give the basket a faux metal finish so I sprayed the paper with some silver spray paint and then added a little black for a more antique weathered look.
Step 4 – Sew Top Pad
The last step is to make the top washable pad for the bed. To make the pad the t-shirt I cut in two layers with slightly larger dimensions than the cardboard and foam. I chose a blanket stitch to sew the two pieces of t-shirt fabric together and then added a little bit of fiberfill and some tacking stitches to finish the pad.
To learn more about blanket stitching check out the tips in the video below.
Here is the finished bed. If I had it to do over again I would make it a little smaller but other than that I like the way it turned out.
As for the cat? Well, that snobby ingrate hasn’t gone near her new bed and she will lay almost anywhere. 😡
You can find more details for this project in the video below.
Thanks for stopping by and Happy Upcycling ,
Update Jan 2021
Whoo Hoo!! I finally captured those sneaky little creatures using their new bed. They both look kind of grumpy, don’t they? Could it be they don’t like having their picture taken? Maybe they just don’t like sharing the bed? Who cares. They are using the bed and that makes me happy.
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