Our new pups have official turned one year old and while I have explained to them in detail that they are now officially adult dogs, it says so right on their bag of dog food after all, they persist in their endlessly energetic puppy behavior and continue pursuing one of their favorite pastimes....
Chewing.
Awhile back we purchased a new foam mattress and with my must save everything DNA I cut up the old one to make dog beds. In what can only be referred to as horrifically lazy, but with the hope that the beds would stay cleaner, I chose to cover them with plastic table clothes.
In addition to being as horribly unattractive as they sound, (one of them was a 4th of July motif) they also did not hold up very well. They tore quite easily exposing the raw edges and the foam beneath. Both of these factors made the dog beds into more of dog toys than places to lay down. I did try to minimize the destruction with duct tape patches but it was clear that a more permanent solution was required.
For awhile I persisted in ignoring the problem. I spent the whole month of October focused on the frivolous projects involved in making an upcycled Minnie Mouse costume. But now it is November and time to get serious, or at least as serious as you can be when you are doing upcycled craft experiments and filming the antic of your pets. And needed to fix those awful dog beds before they were completely demolished.
As luck would have it the dogs offered me the solution by chewing a nice big hole in one of our bed sheets. (I am pretty sure it was the black pup but when you have three dogs you can never be certain.)
Anyway I thought I could use the sheets to make new covers for the dog beds. I am fairly certain that they will be a little sturdier than their plastic predecessors. There were, however, still a few problems to solve.
First, the sheets were pink. (Maybe not a problem for some but not the color I wanted)
Secondly, it is quite possible that I am the laziest house keeper of all time. (So I am worried that the sheets will be coated in pet hair within 5 minutes of being used. And since there is no chance of me cleaning them that often I need covers the repel or at least camouflage the hair rather than attract it.
I think I have come up with a suitable solution. Time will tell I guess. :-)
To start the project I needed to trim down the foam to get rid of the chewed up edges. Then I measured the foam and tore the sheet to the size I needed. Now the project takes a weird little turn. I decided to paint the sheets with house paint. You might recognize the color from my Christmas gift bag make over. Well I still had some paint left and I had my sheet ready to go. Now all I needed was a large drop cloth to paint on.
Fortunately for me, the cats also decided to contribute to this project.
I can only assume that at some point in time they tried scaling the shower curtain leaving the plastic liner torn midway up where they presumably abandoned their alpine adventure after realizing the futility of their endeavor.
Happy Upcycling,
