Life Sprinkled With Glitter: Homemade Doll Bed~Using Stuff Around The House

One evening I was hanging out at the mall with my family! We happened to go into Build A Bear to just look around. My daughter Kiki saw a cute doll bed that she really wanted. I asked her to think about it a few minutes before she decided to spend her money. She normally doesn't want too many things when we go out so when she said she really wanted it I was about to give her her wallet. However, when I looked at the bed I just couldn't let her spend her hard earned money!!! I told her, "We could MAKE a bed for your dolls out of stuff that we have at home and I think we can make it cooler than this one! But, after we try and make one, if you still want to spend your money on this bed, you can!"

Below are the two beds, large and small, they are selling at Build A Bear and their prices!

First thing you must do to make your bed is find empty boxes for the main foundation. I found these two boxes in my recycle trash. We used the Fish Nuggets box for the bottom of the bed and the Brown Rice box to cut out a head & foot board! You can choose any boxes you have around the house. If you are making a bed for a larger doll, I would use a cereal box!

Here is what the boxes look like with the head and foot boards cut out!
You can cut the cardboard however you want for the head and foot boards, you don't have to follow my design exactly.

This next step, you will need fabric. I simply found an old long sleeve pink shirt that didn't fit my girl anymore. You will also need duct tape and Fiberfill or cotton balls!

The first thing I did was cut a piece of fabric from the shirt that would cover the top of the box and overlap a bit!

Lay your cotton balls or fiberfill on top of the box and as you stretch your fabric over top, duct tape it down to the sides!

Here is my box with the fabric fully duct taped down. The top of the bed is nice and soft!

The next step is great fun for your child because they can do it by themselves. Have them rip up piece of paper, plain color or fun scrapbook patterned. Then have your child simply Mod Podge the pieces of paper to the cardboard that you are sung for the head and foot boards. Remember to paint a coat of Mod Podge over everything to seal all the paper down!
Sorry about the poor pictures…..the second photo shows the finished Mod Podged head and foot boards!

This next step you can leave out if you want to! I decided that I was going to have a blanket attached to the bed so I cut more fabric from the old shirt. I cut right along the seam so I wouldn't have to deal with sewing anything! The only rough edge is the bottom.

Next, lay your fabric over the bed.

Then, hot glue it to your bed at one end.

This is such a poor quality picture but it shows how I folded the edges of the fabric in and hot glued them.

Now, Hot glue your head and foot boards to the ends of the bed!

After the head and foot boards are hot glued on, you are going to put one more strip of duct tape all around the bottom edge of the bed. I am using yellow tape because I was out of the pink. you can use two different colors of tape or all the same color. Really, it's whatever you and your child want to do.

The second picture is showing how I cut the edges of the tape so it will lay down smooth!

Here is my girl showing off the progress of the bed so far.

We also wanted to make a pillow.

What I did was cut the sleeve off of the old shirt. Then I got more fiberfill (you could also use cotton here again) and stuffed the sleeve and tied each end closed with string.