Part III: Decorating a small room on a small budget

So far, y'all have seen my new color scheme and pillows, as well as my makeover of the class buckets, pencil holders and bathroom passes. 

Today, I'm going to share the quick update I did on my office chair, the cheap and easy border I made for my bulletin boards as well as some new bean bags I made! 

First, exhibit A - boring old office chair. Nothing wrong with it, of course, I just knew it could be more "fun." I can't resist an easy way to make my room more fun!

I thought about just hot-gluing the new fabric to the existing seat, but at the last minute I decided that I was classier than that. {LOL} So, I flipped that bad boy over, and started hunting for the screws that were supposedly {I read it on Pinterest} on the bottow of this thing, holding it all together. 

I found them, but there was one small problem -- all my screwdrivers looked like this. Pardon my French, but WTH? 

I found another one, but ... why do they make screwdrivers that look like that? #dumb

Annnnnyyywwwaayyy ... I unscrewed all the screws, and the plastic part just pulled off! 

So from there {and I don't have pictures of this part, it's pretty self explanatory}, I just put the fabric on the bottom, and hot glued it in a few strategic areas. I know a lot of tutorials say use a staple gun, but I don't have one ... and I'm not buying one! LOL. So I just glued it, and when I put the plastic right back over it, the plastic was enough to hold it in place. 

The top of the chair was a different story. I pulled and pulled, and looked and look but there wasn't a single screw that would pull off the back panel. It was going to be pretty sad to have a chair with a fun bottom and boring top! 

Then ... genius struck. {If I do say so myself.} I couldn't get the back panel off, but there was a small amount of space between the plastic and the fabric - enough that I could probably "stuff" the fabric inside it, if I could find a tool skinny enough. Enter ... the butter knife. 

LOL! I put the fabric on the top, making sure there was some overlap of the fabric over the plastic. Then I used the knife to wedge the fabric between the plastic and cushion. I trimmed off the edge of the fabric ....

And cleaned up the edges by pushing them into back behind the plastic. Bada-bing, bada-boom ... office chair!! 

And the before / after {with cute burlap polka dot} ... 

NOW! That was a "major" project (it only took about an hour, woo hoo!). Now for two smaller projects. First, bean bags. I had two bean bags that (to me) were a little flat and didn't match my new color scheme. Fortunately I also had some oilcloth that wasn't quuuiittteee big enough to fit over  the table in my room, so I used it for a new bean bag. It was SUPER simple. I folded it, sewed it into a square(ish) ... and put the filling from the old bean bag into the new one! I will say this ... those little pellets were A. GIANT. PAIN. They got everywhere. And looked like the dehydrated marshmallows that come with hot chocolate {But they weren't.} 

A view of the finished product .... BAM. Done. 

Next up ... border for my bulletin boards. I used a TON of border last year, and pretty much used up my store of "normal" bulletin board border {say that five times fast}. Cheap little ole me didn't really want to go purchase more, so what did I do? I made it out of crepe paper from the dollar store! And I'm SOOOO happy with the result. 

All I did was take two pieces of crepe paper, overlap them, and sew them together. The trick is ... {are you read for this?} .... {probably not} ... 

.... to up the tension setting on your sewing machine! Put that bad boy all the way up to its highest setting. {Mine's 9.} It ruffles it up! ... Voila! I used two packages of two rolls {so four total}, and I have one in reserve in case it's not enough or I think of something else to use it for. 

I told you it was easy. :) Now I'm off to Michael's to use the 20% coupon! {Thank you Instagram friends for the heads up!}