DIY: Ikea Kura Train Track Hack

***Welcome Pinteresters! Thank you for taking the time to check out my blog and my Ikea Kura hack. If you like what you see follow me or like me on Facebook! Also stay tuned the Ikea Kura is getting re-hacked with a Lego theme in the next month! (September 2014)***

OK, I'm going to blow your mind.

Are you ready?

You know those wooden train tracks your preschooler has buckets and buckets of? Yes, the ones that are constantly scattered across the floor and in various states of construction/destruction depending on how you look at it.

Well... they fit perfectly along the top rail of the Ikea Kura bunk bed!

Isn't that cute?

Which leads me to my "hack"....

What you will need:

• Lots of straight wooden train tracks
• 8 small curves
• A 14 inch piece of 2x2 
• Hot glue (or wood glue)
• Optional: hill and bridge wooden train track pieces

I'm going to quickly say something about the glue. I used hot glue on this project because I wanted to be able to remove it as my children's interests change. I plan on having this bunk bed until Kyle is a pre-teen so it really needs to be changeable. I have had this on the kids' Kura bed for a few months now and Kyle has pulled a few tracks off but they are easy to replace, just a little hot glue and we are ready to go again! If you are fine with something more permanent go with wood glue and those train tracks will be there forever!

OK on to the "hack"...

Start with making the removable ladder insert.

Cut the 2x2 so that it is 14 inches long.

Tip: Don't worry about using a saw or hauling a large piece of wood home, Home Depot and Lowes will cut wood for you.

Another tip: you may be able to find the wood piece you need in the scrap wood bin at the back of the store for super cheap. Well, even cheaper than a 2x2 already is.

Once the wood is cut it should just fit in between the ladder space but still be easily removed. Sand, paint or poly it as needed.

Position the curved piece of track so that it lines up with the track that will be around the bed frame. Glue that piece to the ladder insert.

The curve piece will over hang the wood a bit but that is OK! That is what we want!

Get the longest straight piece of track you have, in this case I used an old suspension bridge. A really old suspension bridge! My brother played with that piece when he was a toddler now he's almost 20!

Glue the long straight piece so that it goes past the end of the wood an inch or more. I only needed two pieces for my ladder insert. The one short curve and the long suspension bridge. If you have shorter pieces of track make sure you lay them out first so that at least one goes past the wood by an inch. This over hang is what holds the bridge in place and allows it to be removable.

Now that the ladder insert is done lay out the other track all the way around the edge of the bed until you have a configuration that works. I added a few hills and other bridge pieces to make it more fun. Glue those in place and that is it. You are done! Look at that happy Kyle face!

Marvel Quilts

This week has been one of those weeks. The kids were sick over the weekend and now I'm sick. My biggest accomplishment in the last 5 days? Making the kids beds with the quilts I made them for Christmas. Yay! We all have those weeks don't we?

The boys have been into Marvel comics for almost a year now. It started with watching Iron Man on Netflix then they discovered Spider-Man and the Avengers now if it has a Marvel character on it they love it. Luckily for me there is no shortage of Marvel! Even Joann's has some cute retro-style Marvel fabric prints which I used to make these quilts for the boys.

This is Kyle's Spider-Man quilt on his bed. All made up nice and neat. Notice Spider-Man on the wall, and on his water bottle? Yes. This kid loves Spider-Man.

His sweet little name right in the center with Spider-Man climbing on it

The whole of Kyle's quilt. I used some of the sheet material as extra quilt squares.

I backed both the quilts with flat sheets.
Kyle's is backed with a classic Spider-Man design from Target.

Jake's little bottom bunk bed also looking sweet and ready for sleep. Maybe...

The whole of Jake's Marvel quilt. I added one square for Diego another favorite show of Jake's.

Jake's quilt is also backed with the top sheet from the set I bought for him. 

This is Marvel's WHAM sheet set. It was a little bit pricey for kid's sheets but this 

pattern just took me. Too perfect for the quilt!

The boys Ikea bunk bed all super hero'd out.

Look how cute these were all rolled up for Christmas! I finished them the night before. Shhh. Don't tell anyone! I was up until 2am working on them Christmas Eve.

Little Jake enjoying his quilt at Christmas time.

DIY: Super Hero Cape Shirt

Last night I was looking at the V-Day shirts I made the boys and thinking they needed something else. Not that they weren't cool on their own, I mean an Iron-Man heart? How cool is that? But the shirts did need that extra special something to make them really, really cool.

Being the creative Mom that I am I stole borrowed an idea from a shirt I bought awhile ago. Jake, the youngest, has a few shirts from Target with cute little velcro-capes on that back. I thought this would be perfect to make the shirts really, really cool. I mean they are super hero V-Day shirts after all!

Jake's Iron-Man shirt was the easiest. I used a yellow cape from one of the Target shirts we already had. All I had to do was sew some velcro on to the back and vawla! Shirt with cape in under 2 minutes!

For Kyle's Spider-Man cape it was a little bit more work. Target does not make shirts with capes for the "big boys" section of the store so I had to make one myself. I used a piece of blue costume satin and a blue and red sheer spider web fabric I bought off of Ebay. This is the same fabric I used to make capes for Kyle's Spider-Man birthday a few months back.

Pretty cool isn't? Backed with blue the red really pops!

First I looked at how Jake's capes laid on the shirts. The cape start at just below the collar and goes to just below the end of the shirt.

Using this as a guide I cut the two pieces of fabric to size and cut around the top to accommodate the collar. I accidentally cut mine a bit short...

After that it is pretty easy. Clip around the curve.

Sew all the way around the edges leaving an opening at the bottom. Turn right side out and then top stitch. I added the velcro at this point to the cape....

 ....and to the shirt.

It's not perfectly straight but that's OK Kyle will love it either way. Kids aren't very picky.

Have a great V-Day everyone!

DIY: Spiderman Valentine Masks and A Shirt

Valentine's Day is upon us and if you are my 5-year-old boy that means Spider-Man Valentine's!

I wanted to do something special for the kids in my son's pre-school class so I decided to make felt Spider-Man masks based on the pattern found over at Cutesy Crafts. I made these masks once before for my son's 5th birthday party. They were a HUGE hit there and many of the kids still play with them 3 months later so I knew they would be a welcomed gift instead of candy.

I did change a few things about the masks. I used 13 inches of elastic instead of 14 because I noticed as the masks from the birthday party were worn so often the elastic stretched out and became loose.

I used puffy paint to make the webs instead of sewing them on because hey, I was making 10 of these things and I wanted to save time. In honor of V-Day I also made the center ring of the spider web a heart shape.

Also in an effort to save time, I hot glued everything together. I did this for the birthday masks as well and they have held up nicely. I used lots of glue on the elastic and around the eyes. After I put the two sides of the mask together with the elastic in between I went back and checked for spots I missed around the edges and eyes.

All in all the masks probably took about an hour, not including the puffy paint dry time. The most time consuming thing was cutting them all out and then cutting out all the eye holes. I worked while I watched TV in the evening so it wasn't that bad.

The shirt was also fairly easy. I used the Spider-Man mask temple to draw the eyes on a red piece of felt, then drew a heart shape around that, added the webbing using Puffy Paint and zig-zagged it to a shirt

Once my 3-year-old little boy got a look at the Spider-Man Valentine shirt I was told I had to make him one too. My 3-year-old is into Iron Man so thus, using the Iron Man mask template over at Cutesy Crafts I made an Iron Man Heart Shirt in the same way I made the Spider-Man one.

(He wouldn't look at the camera)

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

DIY: Interior Car Door Makeover with Mod Podge

I’m just going to be blunt. I have an old car, it’s seen a lot, it’s been across the country 3 times. It was my college car and I still have it, partly because it is a Volkswagen and it will probably run forever and partly because I enjoy not having a car payment. I drive a 02 Volkswagen Beetle. I am able to do all my daily driving for our family including taking the kids and dog to and fro in this little car. I can even haul the guinea pig hay home from the feed store:

Ha! Pretty awesome for a little thing isn’t it? So the pros of the car are it will run forever and it is paid for the con of the car is the interior is starting to fall apart. I have been told by the Volkswagen mechanic that there is something about that crayon smelling glue that starts to wear down in the Texas heat. Such was the case with the pleather on the doors. Sadly, I do not have pictures of how the door was suppose to look so just use your imagination that it looked good and then, after the pleather fell off it looked like this:

See all that yellow foamy stuff? Yeah that stuff is sticky! It gets everywhere. It was very embarrassing to get out of the car and have that yellow foamy stuff stuck to my arm as it does not brush off easily.

This is where the Mod Podge comes in… I was sick and tired of having a ghetto looking car, partly held together by duct tape and sheer force of will. I don’t know much about cars or car doors but I know Mod Podge and I know fabric so gosh-darn-it-all I’m going to Mod Podge fabric to the door!

I started by scrubbing that sticky yellow foam off with the scrubby side of a sponge, no water, just sponge. It came off pretty easily. You could probably use some sort of Goo-Be-Gone to get it cleaner but I didn’t bother since I’m covering it with fabric.

Next cover the whole space with lots and lots of Mod Podge. I used Hard Coat Mod Podge. Don’t be stingy especially on the curves.

Followed by carefully placing the fabric on the Mod Podge. I used a piece of fabric that was much bigger than the space I was Mod Podging to make sure that I had enough to cover the whole area, trim where needed and still left a “seam allowance” to tuck under the door frame.

I tried to be careful to get it to lay flat over the bumps and curves of the door but it didn’t always work the way I wanted it to so I had to make a few snips here and there:

After the fabric was mostly in place I left it to dry. When I came back I trimmed the edges leaving about ½ an inch all the way around then carefully took a butter knife and rammed the edge of the fabric up under the plastic door thing. This was the part that worried me the most but ended up being the easiest.

Once that was done I applied about 10 more coats of Mod Podge in 30 minute intervals.  

My car door went from drab to fab! Star Trek fab! Maybe you won’t use Star Trek fabric but I figured I have had this car for 9 years, I’m probably going to have it for another year, so I might as well just make it my own.

Consider this car the ultimate in Geekery. ;-)