Shnazy Headboard Tutorial

Hmm.... let's see if can type this with a sleepy nursey baby on the boppy and a 
cranky toddler to boot.... 

So most of you know I recently finished my long awaited upholstered headboard. Between renovating, caring for a toddler, and planning for another birth it took me quite a while to finally get around to finishing it, but alas, it's done! I would be lying if I said I wasn't ecstatic :)  I tried to take pix along the way to show how I did the steps for those who want to know, but you'll have to forgive the very unprofessional quality of my photos. Our computer recently crashed and while it is "fixed", I can't seem to recover any of my programs. No more Photoshop or Microsoft. It's very frustrating.

So here we go...

I always start any project by browsing tutorials. (gotta love Google ;p) There are tons of headboard tutorials so it's not hard to find what you want. I was originally going to keep it simple with a basic rectangle but decided to go all out, do something crazy and pray it turned out decent enough to hang lol. It was honestly a lot harder than I anticipated, most likely because it was such a large project, but still fairly simple. 

I used a 1/2" piece of plywood. Freehanded the design on one side and made a stencil with some wax paper to trace on the other side (notice my toddler's green crayon artwork lol). Jon cut it out for me (I have a phobia of saws). The saw actually went ca-put with about a foot left to cut. Such is my luck it seems lol. I really didn't want to put out the money for a new saw but even moreso I didn't want to leave a half cut piece of plywood when I was finally ready to do it. ugh. So off Jon goes to the pawn shop :)

After it was cut out, I laid it on the foam (ended up using egg crate foam instead of regular foam cuz it was just so much cheaper) and traced around the foam with a sharpie. Cut the foam. Spread the batting on the floor, then the foam, then lay the wood on top and ready to start stapling. Bad luck again! I scrounged up a total of 4 staplers but my pack of staples didn't fit any of them! Off to the store again. 

Next I had to freehand the swirls and curls over the batting and stapled down the lines where the nail head trim was to go so it would be easier to find after I put the velvet on. Once again, as luck would have it, Joanne's had discontinued the nail-head trim literally like 2 days before I got there to buy some, and of course no other store in town carries it, but I did find a little old couple that sold me some :)  They wouldn't take my Joann's coupon though...

OK this part was a little tricky. Since it has so many curves and some really sharp turns, just trying to wrap the velvet around to staple would not have worked at all. I ended up making a pattern of the whole headboard with wax paper, traced it onto the velvet, cut an inch around the traced line for seem allowance. Cut long strips about 4" wide and sewed them around the edge of the front piece to overlap onto the backside. I don't really know how better to explain that part and I don't have pix so sorry. I hope that made enough sense to get the point across. 

And lastly, with my awesome little helper, I put the velvet cover on, more stapling, and attached the trim. I ended up spray painting the trim black because the "French natural" just didn't look good IMO. I used the trim that comes in a roll. Awesome stuff! I only had to nail every 5th hole. Anything that makes the job simpler, I'm game for lol. 

And VOILA! 

My new centerpiece for the master. It's still a work in progress. Now that I have my main piece done, I am much more motivated to finish the room. 

......

Hope you enjoyed! If you are wanting to try this and need some help, feel free to contact me. I had a VERY hard time finding advice while working on this. I frequented several decorating forums and spent who knows how many hours looking at tutorials, but for some reason I honestly could not find a single soul to answer any of my questions about upholstering.