Platform Bed, Part 2

Sorry it took me so long to get back to this, but I’ll be honest, until about 2 weeks ago I wasn’t sure which way I wanted to finish it.  But I finally finished it, and I’m going to share that with you.  If you missed the first part, click here:  Platform bed.

I finally decided I wanted it to be a daybed.  I thought this would come in very handy in my doll house project, especially since I have 4 dolls and only room for two bedrooms.  It will be in the living room and can be a sofa by day, bed by night.

I cut two pieces of foamboard 12 inches x 8inches:

I then made a pencil mark 6 inches from the bottom on the short side, and 4 inches from the opposite side on the top. Once I had those marked, I drew a straight line from both marks:

I then cut that piece off so I have two pieces for the ends of the bed that are angled:

I glued those pieces to each end of the bed. Thank heavens for my husband and his jars of food product samples, they made great stabilizers for the ends while I waited for them to dry! Don’t do what I did though, be sure to put something under this, I wasn’t thinking and spent some time cleaning up tacky glue off my table pad

I let that dry for a couple of hours to be sure it was stable. Then I cut another piece 8inches by 20 1/2 inches and glued it to the back.  Let it set for 24 hours before doing anything else with it so it is definitely dry.

Now that it’s done I just need to paint it. If you do paint foam board, DO NOT spray paint it, the spray paint will melt the foam. You need to use acrylic paint and a brush. I made a mattress and bedding set for it I still have to make some bolster and throw pillows for it. You’ll get to see it when I do the official “House Tour”!  I have to say that $2 for two sheets of foam board was a steal in comparison to what this bed would have cost had I bought one similar.  I don’t know that I would recommend this for small children, but for a kid 8  and over who is careful or for a collector display, it is perfect.

I also managed to get two of my other pieces spray painted at long last, so I have lots of finish work to do on those two pieces. Stay tuned 🙂

Have a great weekend!

Hmmmm…

I’ve shared with all of you my thrift store finds.  I think that you will notice one thing that most of these items have in common–they aren’t American Girl brand, in fact a lot of them aren’t even really intended for doll use.  The closest I’ve come to that is the Battat horse I found.

This past week two doll bloggers/collectors made some awesome finds.  One found Mia’s bed set.  It wasn’t cheap (still $50 by the time she used a coupon), but an incredible find considering Mia has been retired for a while now.  Another found a used Kanani that needed some TLC for $20 and the snack cart for (are you sitting down) $7!!!  It was missing some parts, but the main part of it was intact and appeared to be in good shape.  I wish I could find something even close to this awesome.  I keep coming up empty handed for the most part.

I’m wondering what the issue is.  I know that people are donating stuff like crazy, I’ve even been turned away a time or two when I went to donate because they were too full.  I know as a kid I regularly cleaned out my toys and donated them, and I’m sure that still goes on.  Yet when I go to most of the thrift stores around here, not only am I not seeing any AG or related stuff, I’m not seeing much as far as toys go period.  What they do have is junk and probably should just have been thrown in the trash.  Our local Goodwill has a tiny toy section, almost non-existent, and I have yet to find a single thing I would purchase.  I’ve noticed this at other Goodwill stores in this area too.  Weird.

I hope this means that a lot of the toys are perhaps being refurbished and given to kids that don’t have much.  That would be fine.  However, I do have concerns that anything that might be of any value is being scooped up by unscrupulous employees who are reselling them for personal profit.  I’m not just pulling that off the top of my head either, there was a scandal several years back with a local thrift store employee who was doing this with various items.  She was let go from her job as a result.  There have been some other incidents as well.  My sister won’t donate to several organizations in her area because of this.

Have you found anything AG or other toy related at thrift stores that you would consider a great find?   I’m just curious.  I am going to check out a different store that my niece told me about, if I find anything cool, I’ll be sure to show it to you.  I’m not holding my breath though.  For me it seems like I have to go completely out of town to find the really good stuff.  Very odd.

 

Belated Birthday

My BFF and I both have a September birthday, and our plan was to go out to lunch together somewhere in between to celebrate.  You know that saying “best laid plans”-a few days before we were to go she had a family emergency that has kept her busy ever since.  We did manage to get our birthday lunch in last weekend, better late than never!

She has a terrible time figuring out what to buy for me, so a few years ago we came up with a great idea-we make “gift” favorites boards at Etsy and share them with each other, giving us ideas or even specific items.  I love it because I know we are helping out a small business person as well.  I always try to pin a variety of things in a range of prices, so far it has worked out really well.  She got me a cute little bee charm for on a necklace or bracelet, and this:

Love it!!! It reminds me a lot of the sweaters I’ve picked up on our various travels to Ireland-except I don’t have one in this color, might have to fix that… The detail is outstanding, the pattern is carried around to the back to just like a real Irish sweater.

Worn with the t-shirt, jeans and moccasins, Cassandra looks ready for a nice fall walk.

The sweater came from Ready To Wear For Dolls. She doesn’t have any sweaters like this available at the moment, but she has plenty of other cute things. Have I said how much I love Etsy?!?!?! 🙂