Why is it so hard to find beautiful, creative kids room headboards, or beds in general? Well sometimes you just have to make it yourself, and in todays post we are going to share how we made our daughter a velvet scalloped bed and saved over $700!
Shop Paisleys Bedroom
DIY Velvet Scalloped Headboard – for under $250!
I was looking for fun beds and headboards for my daughter Paisleys bedroom makeover we were working on in the fall. I came across the cutest velvet scalloped bed from Wayfair, but sadly the price tag of $1000 for a twin bed was well out of our price range for this project.
It looked like a complicated DIY project but I had fallen in love with it so I sent a screen shot of the bed to my husband and asked if he thought it was at all possible to maybe make it instead. And to my joy and surprise he said yes!
This project ended up being fairly simple, though it does take some time to get the shape of the scallop shape drawn out correctly. After that it’s a very easy upholstery project.
Paisleys bedroom makeover video
What you will need for this project
This project doesn’t require a lot of materials. Bonus you can use inexpensive velvet curtains (we got ours from Amazon) instead of buying velvet fabric which can be pricey.
- MDF
- Velvet fabric in your color choice, or velvet curtains like these we bought from Amazon
- Thick upholstery foam
- Staple gun
- Compass afor making the scallop shape
Getting Started
He began by drawing the shape out on the MDF. Starting with making a large semi circle equal to the width of the bed, and then using the compass to draw the 9 semi-circles of the clam shell on top. Getting them evenly spaced was simple, dividing the 180° by 9 gives you 20° each.
He then used a bendy piece of plastic to draw the arced lines. You could also do this by eye, but using the plastic piece to mould the shape he wanted and then just trace it was easier.
Using a Jigsaw he cut them out and then sanded the edges smooth!
Once we had then cut out and labeled, we traced out pieces of upholstery foam about 3/4″ bigger than the MDF piece all the way around.
We had to make sure when cutting out to the fabric to leave plenty of excess to pull tight in the next step. Also make sure to keep all the pieces the same orientation, we had one piece that we upholstered the wrong side… oops!
Upholstering wasn’t too hard, just make sure to do each side evenly first and keep it pulled very tight. The only tricky part was the really curved inside corners on pieces 2 and 8, but even that wasn’t bad.
The velvet curtain fabric was very stretchy and forgiving, so that really helped to make upholstering them easier.
Thats it for the headboard section!
Jade glued some pieces to the back to hold them together and then cut out 3 more squares of MDF for the two side as well as the headboard under the clam shell. They were all upholstered in the same way (but much easier).
These pieces were cut to the size of her metal bed frame, and Jade attached them at the corner with some angle brackets.
These are not actually attached to anything other than each other and are just resting on the floor to give the illusion of a full bed frame.
The left side of the bed against the wall does not have an upholstered wall but you would do the same and attach it to the foot board with more angle brackets if required.
Shop Paisley’s Bedroom
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