Antique headboard repurposed into a beautiful creativity-board

Antique headboard repurposed into a beautiful creativity-board.

 

While cleaning out her barn my sister found a forgotten old headboard in the loft. She thought I might be able to find a new “repurpose” for it; she knows me well.  I have been wanting a creativity center for the studio; a place to display creative inspiration and project plans. A vague idea had been percolating in my mind; a message board, but on a grand scale. The dusty wooden headboard was the right scale and had a graceful form, perfect for my creativity board.

With the help of hubby the found headboard was redesigned into a useful, lovely focal point in the studio.

Here’s how we repurposed an antique headboard into a lovely creativity board.

Using the headboard as the  template we cut 1/4 inch plywood into a smaller version of the headboard by trimming four inches off the pattern all the way around.

I placed a layer of quilt batting over the plywood and held that in place with a layer of burlap which we held in place with staples on the back side of the plywood.

Next we covered it with a vintage chenille bedspread, again stapled to the back. Staples were also used to attach the cotton string, snuggly but not taut, that we crisscrossed across the front, over the chenille. Where  the strings crossed each other, I stapled the intersection down into the plywood, creating a tuft. Then the plywood was glued to the headboard, which had been painted a soft white.

We applied construction adhesive to the back of the plywood, carefully centered on the headboard and weighted it down for several hours. To add strength we added screws through the back of the headboard into the plywood (making sure they did not protrude out the front side of the plywood. I finished the project with buttons over the intersections of the string.

Now the creativity board, hangs in the studio, covered with creative possibilities.