Desk Chair, Frames & Clock

I'm still recovering a bit, so I slept a lot more than I normally would this weekend.  As a result I don't feel like I've accomplished a lot.

Though my packages finally arrived so three cheers for the post office getting their rears in gear.  (Although one got dropped at my neighbor's house and they brought it over twenty minutes later when I was trying to figure out how to complain that the package had not been delivered despite what the status showed on the USPS site.)  Soo...baby steps?

But the package from Miniatures.com arrived during the week so I could at least get started.

My idea for the desk chair was to bash the Lydia Armchair and turn it into a desk chair with wheels.

So I microwaved it and took it apart.  I sanded the seat portion so I could reattach the back at an angle.  I saved the pieces of fabric so I could use them as patterns for my new fabric.

I had to use new pieces of cardstock for the covers to the back and bottom of the chair.  Because in my experience fabric doesn't glue as well as wood I altered the seat and back cushion fabric pieces to leave the bottom of the chair back and back of the seat to leave the wood bare.

The bottle of nail polish weighs just enough to keep the chair from tipping over backwards.

But once everything was glued together again I had to wait for the glue to dry.  I added a back rung to the legs so I could keep them stable since they felt a little wobbly gluing them back in.

I wanted a pillow to go on the chair and decided to use a spare piece of dowel to make a bolster type pillow.  I wrapped a piece of batting around the dowel and small circular pieces on the ends then glued the end pieces of fabric over them.

I used Kris's method to make tassels for the ends and used the same embroidery stitch for the edges of the main piece of fabric.

As you can see, rubber bands were my friend for this chair/pillow project.

There were a few spots on the fabric of the chair that had gotten glue on them.  I actually didn't mind too much because I wanted to make the chair look pretty beat up.  So I used my craft knife to scrape the glue away and purposely went down to the base fabric a few times. In other places I added stuffing with a spot of glue or used a needle to pull pieces of stuffing into the right place.

I'm pretty happy with how it looks so I tried it out in the room.

I had ordered some frames but they were made of metal, very heavy and extremely elaborate looking so I kept them for something else.

Instead I got some of my frame wood out and made my own.  I would like to go on the record that this was not easy for me and I dislike making frames.

But once they were glued together I painted them black and then antique gold on top of the black.  It makes the frames stand out from the walnut of the wood but not garishly.

Oh, I also aged up a fireplace tool set and glued that to the fireplace hearth.  The tools are crazy glued in place so they won't fall out when I glue the fireplace in.

The other thing I got in the mail was a silver tray. So I glued my cranberry glass decanter and glasses to it.

I wanted a clock for the mantle but couldn't find one I really liked so I stole the clock face from one of my old beat up clocks and made the wood surround for an 'over the hill' mantle clock.

I like how the red mahogany stain pops against the walnut of the mantle.

I'm excited because I'm close to the point of putting the books on the shelves with some other curiosities.  I really should look through Poe's poems and stories for more things he mentioned.  He wrote detective stories as well as poetry.  A few things would be:

A gold bug
A black cat
A purloined letter
A magnifying glass
Cask of Amontillado
Message in a bottle
A box with teeth
A model of an air balloon?
A heart (under glass?)
A jar of eyes (or one eye?)

I was thinking of finding a skull which could be fun to have either on the mantle or shelf.  A little nod to Sherlock Holmes.  Nothing super obvious but something macabre.

I ordered a few things off Etsy and I can make some others.  So we'll see how it goes!

Hope you're all doing well and you had a great weekend!