Two Infamous Linky Firsts! - Currently & Made It (Crate Seats Walk-Through Edition)

I am extremely excited (not to mention extremely late) to finally hook up with two of the most fun linky parties I've encountered!

First, the August currently!  I am finally linking up with Oh' Boy 4th Grade. This is making it harder and harder to resist the mustache craze! Between that and the cute owls... I have no idea why I fight it!  Please excuse the length of my answers. I happen to be a rambler.  Hopefully this is something you get used to. Been this way all my life, unfortunately.

RULES...
1. RULE OF 3... if you link up I ask that you go and look at the 2 in front of your link and the one after you AND comment... this SPREADS the LOVE for sure!!! and it was a HUGE success last time :)

2. on the B2S must haves... I am completely OK with you promoting one of your store items HERE... BUT if you promote one of yours I am asking that you also promote someone else too... so if you think you have an item that someone JUST has to have for B2S go ahead and PLUG IT but please PLUG from another store too...

Next up!  My first-ever MADE IT MONDAY!

On Sunday, I met up with a good friend from college with the mostly-sole purpose of creating our very own crate seats! We added lunch, a movie, dinner, some Olympics closing ceremony watching, and other randoms to our to-do list... basically made a day of it! It was great fun! :)  Anyway, the end result of the day:

Click on through if you'd like some instructions!  Though for the record, this ended up costing more than I expected! I was surprised.  So in the cut, you'll also see prices.  That way you can be well-informed. :)  But good gracious, all the cashiers & workers who helped us were greatly confused and simultaneously amused by our goal.  A precious few were concerned about the safety of our idea, too!

So one of our several stops was to Lowe's, and the guy very nicely cut our boards down to size for us!  I wish I had asked what size it made it to help anyone following these directions, but alas. :(  We simply brought in a bin and asked him to cut it so it would fit just inside the lip of it, like a lid.  We got a sheet of 3/4 thickness plywood.  I think he said it was a 2 x 4?  That ended up costing about $15 for the sheet and made us 3 boards from it. So for roughly $5 per board, that didn't seem TOO shabby!  And for the record, we used bins from Walmart. They ran about $3.50 each.

Oddly enough, the one board he cut as a model fit the one specific bin perfectly....but NONE of the rest fit the others.  So I suggest buying something to sand the wood down, as seen in the image below.  It shaves it down to fit snugly (because you do have to account for the fabric), and it just feels nicer once it's sanded.  We bought a sander spongey thing.  Sorry - I didn't pay close enough attention to the name.  It was in the hardware/paint section of Walmart and cost about $3.50 Also, if memory serves. We got the one that said it was for bare surfaces...medium (coarseness), I think. As opposed to fine.

I regret not getting a picture of my fabric swatches!  But those were also at Walmart.  We got them cut 18 inches rather than a full yard. That seemed to fit just perfectly. Bonus: If you cut the fabric at the fold line, one half will literally fit the board perfectly!  And therefore gets you TWO lids out of ONE piece.  Of course, fabric is different depending on the material and design, but my three 18 in pieces cost me about $9.50, and my friend about $10.  Below is my friend stapling hers together - she didn't do the halvsies cut, so kind of wasted that cute fabric. No worries - we figured it out after! :)

But that's a finishing picture.  Initially, I had full stapled three sides of my fabric down...but I did it WAY too tightly to stuff the padding in nicely. So I had to pull a few out and ripped my fabric a smidge in the process.  Therefore, I recommend stapling it as seen below.  Staple 2 perpendicular sides completely, then staple the 3rd only halfway.

So, speaking of, there's  2 materials I didn't mention yet!  The staple gun ran us about $9 and the staples were... $3, I think?  But pay close attention to whether your gun takes heavy duty or light duty staples! We made that mistake and had to go all the way back out to the stores... only to find we made that mistake because Walmart was out of our staples! Went to Home Depot, it was closed. Cried a little. Remembered Target. Rejoiced. Sped by the Dollar Spot to save our sanity.

The other material was padding, as seen below. (And kindly ignore my chipped polish. I'm deeply upset about it haha)  We bought this Poly-Fil brand padding - it felt amazing in the bag.  I'm pretty sure that was about $9 because we got the ENORMOUS bag.  Each. We clearly have no idea visually how much 3 seats would need.  We now have a ridiculous amount of fluff left. I barely even dented mine, honestly. (This is an AFTER picture, if that gives you any idea. This is how much fluff I have left after 3 seats!!) Even if we shared it, I think we'd still have a fair amount left.  So...maybe go for a smaller bag - though I couldn't tell you how many you'd need!

So of course, the next step is stuffing your cushion!  Hopefully, you left that space open - you can see how it looks in the picture below.  For me, I found this method left me with lots of lumpy spots that I could only fix some of the time.  I think my problem was stretching the fabric too tight when I stapled.  But I think in the long run, it'll even out with all the butts that cushion will get.  And it's comfortable, lumps or not! It was tested by another friend.  He enjoyed it immensely.

Continue stuffing until you're satisfied and it reaches the edges and corners of the board. Staple up the side as you go until you're ready to staple down that last side, as seen below.  Then you have a lovely cushion that can be used as the lid in your storage bin! Efficient AND cute. :)

 Hopefully it fits!  If it does, here's what your end result should look like  - & please forgive me for cutting it off in the picture. I have no idea what possessed me to not fix that...):  In the background of the second picture (with my lovely feet haha), you'll see my friend's bin. She put ribbon across the middle as an attempt at a handle - a suggestion from one of the tutorials I found.  Hers didn't seem to work because of the boards' tight fits...but she did it for the others anyway, figuring in time, it'll probably loosen.  I'll be waiting for her report before I bother.  But in case you're interested for yourself, the rolls cost us about $2 each.  One roll sufficed for her 3 bins.  Not sure how much she had leftover though.

 

In the picture below...... I'm REALLY not sure what happened there!  One side is so nice and full and just luscious.  Not sure how that piddly side came to be but it makes me sad. That tiny bit of OCD in me might just have to rip some staples out again and try again!

And one last picture of the final products...because, surprisingly, I think my cell phone caught a better, more true-to-life visual than my super duper fancy camera!

In total, the basics ran us about $44 each for our 3 bins.  $46 if you throw in ribbon.  However, we had to take into account 2 things:

• We bought more fluff than any human being could ever use &
• We didn't have any of the tools - staple gun, staples, sanding object

Not having the tools added on another $15.50 total (not each, since we shared). Thereabouts.  And unless you plan on making a huge army of chairs, or are making a significant amount WITH a friend, I wouldn't suggest that huge bag.  But sadly, I don't remember how much the smaller ones ran.  It's possible you just may as well get the enormous bag.

Now, I hope you enjoyed that walk-through!  Please leave any questions in a comment and I will do my best to get back to you on that! :)