Meet Claire
Today, I have a new friend for all of us to meet. Claire has been blogging away at
Hi to all of Linda's lovely readers! Claire here, guest posting from my usual home at the blonde bargain. I am so honored today to be sharing with you my DIY for Greek inspired pelmets. Linda is quite the DIY queen, so I am so glad she thought of my DIY project as worthy!
Hi to all of Linda's lovely readers! Claire here, guest posting from my usual home at the blonde bargain. I am so honored today to be sharing with you my DIY for Greek inspired pelmets. Linda is quite the DIY queen, so I am so glad she thought of my DIY project as worthy!
I have three windows in my room -- two standard 43" x 67" and one large 63" x 67". After browsing through some window inspiration as well as discovering the difference between pelmets, cornice boards, and valances, I knew I didn't want to just create a plain rectangular pelmet. It would be much too boring in plain white fabric with black ribbon. I wanted to do something with a little more pop, so I figured a shape with ninety degree angles would be easier to do than curved edges, right? So wrong. But they turned out looking pretty darn good after all. Dontcha think?
First, I drew out a sketch of what I wanted my pelmet to look like. I decided for the large window I wanted the pelmet to overlap five extra inches on each side of the window, and two and a half inches on each side for the small window. Making the pelmet larger than the size of the window helps to create an optical illusion and make the window look larger. I made the greek inspired corners to be 5" by 1.5" for the large window pelmet, and 3" by 1.5" for the small pelmets.
After this step was done, I headed out for my list of supplies. Doing the math first is crucial to purchasing the correct amount of fabric, batting, and foam core. This will [hopefully] ensure one trip to the store for all of your supplies. I have included a visual picture of all the materials that I used, but most of the tools -- ie. rulers, hot glue gun, staple gun -- I already had. If you do not have these items on hand, I have included some links below of where to purchase online.
transparent ruler | L square | cork backed 36" ruler |x-acto knife | fine tipped Sharpie | ducktape | foamcore | batting | ribbon | staple gun | 3/8" staples | epoxy | shelf brackets | hot glue gun
*tip: when buying your foamcore, chose a brand name that will be more durable [I bought a few pieces from dollar tree that ended up being too flimsy -- the staples didn't stay in them as well]
Once I rounded up all my supplies, I got down to business. These are the steps of I followed for creating all three of my pelmets:
1. Using duck tape, tape together the total length of foamcore needed to make the front width of your pelmet.
3. Using your x acto knife, cut foamcore on drawn lines.
4. Reinforce the seams with a piece of foamcore and ducktape.
5. Cut small rectangles and ducktape to ends of front of pelmet to create the depth.
6. Cut piece of batting and fabric with about 1-2 extra inches on all sides to wrap the foamcore; lay on floor with fabric face down, batting, and foamcore on top.
7. Start wrapping edges and stapling down using staple gun. See below for best way to cover corners of the pelmet.
*tip: make sure you are pulling taunt so you will not have wrinkles in your pelmet when complete. *tip: if you notice that you have a large amount of extra fabric at the location where the L brackets are going to go, then cut before stapling down -- this will allow the L brackets have hard surface to adhere to. 8. Use epoxy to glue L brackets down the same distance from the top of the pelmet. 9. Hot glue ribbon to top of pelmet by starting at the inside to hide the edge. Apply hot glue to edge closest to top of pelment while wraping around all three sides of the pelmet.
Thanks Claire, I am sure we can all appreciate how much work and math planning that was. If you have a moment, go over and visit Claire's blog...
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