A Guest of Honor

Hello everybody, and Happy Friday! Today, I am totally pumped to introduce to you HSHA's guest of honor and my very best friend, Ashley Studyvin.  Ashley and I first met when we were 14 years old and after realizing that we had many common interests - including interior decorating - we have been “besties” ever since.  Ashley is creative and has always had a great eye for design.  When she emailed me pictures of her latest project, I took one look and just knew I had to have her guest blog.  So, please welcome Ashley as she shares with us how she created her beautiful, DIY tufted headboard…

I grew up on the East Coast of North Carolina.  Summers meant frolicking along the sandy shores of places like Myrtle Beach, and, if I was lucky, Charleston.  To this day, Charleston is still one of my favorite cities.  The historic row homes that run along cobblestone streets near the water, better known as "Rainbow Row," always tend to take my breath away.  So, it should come to no surprise that our first home, although in Alabama, would be in a cheery, Charleston-esque cottage:

Given the overall look of the home, I knew I wanted to bring the beach to us.  "Coastal chic" is a rather new design phenomenon where you use natural and casual textures paired with contemporary features to create an elegant space that is reminiscent of the beach. In this home, I have used watery tones such as seafoam and aqua, contrasted by pops of coral.  (Turquoise is my favorite color and it is used somehow in almost every room in our home.  I am convinced that Erin of House of Turquoise and I would be best friends!)  Creams and whites are also used throughout the house, giving it the airy, breezy feel of the eastern shores.

With that being said, I recently noticed our master bedroom was one of the most abandoned rooms of our home.  (Design-wise that is!)  We have been sleeping on a large, king-size mattress with no headboard.  So, when we woke up last Saturday, the Husband and I were inspired to embark on a weekend long project: "The DIY Tufted Headboard." 

First, we researched DIY tutorials and ended up using this one from Centsational Girl.  After printing the instructions off, we set out to various stores to gather all the materials. **My advice to any that choose to do this project is to gather the materials well before the day you are going to make it, because we somehow lost half a day trying to gather everything.** We stopped at United Textiles in Bessemer, a “diamond in the rough” discount fabric store, for our fabric.  I was immediately drawn to a crisp white linen fabric, appreciating the fact that it is a casual yet classically chic fabric.  And, because we knew we wanted our headboard to be pretty large, we purchased 4.5 yards.  


While working on the headboard, I made sure to keep some of these inspiration photos close at hand:  

Meredith Heron Designs via Decorpad

via Studio Ten 25

The last piece of advice I would give about this project is to have one person hold down each button while another staples the tuft underneath.  This creates a deeper tuft, and keeps it from looking cheap.  Otherwise, it will look like you just simply glued a button on a board of fabric and will have no depth.  The overall cost of the project was $180, which is nothing compared to purchasing one- similar headboards would cost us upwards of $800 or more. Anyways, after two days of hard work, we are pretty darn pleased with the results!!

Ta-Da! Now for the rest of the room... :)