DIY Papasan Cushion

I live a block down from a private school. 9 times out of 10 they leave a lot of bulk garbage out front and it happens to be right by my building’s bulk garbage pile. I call this wondrous place my Magic Pile. Why would I do such a thing? I’ll get right to it, but you should really get into why you’re so judgmental.

I’m sorry, I just overdid it on lunch and don’t know how to feel. So much daikon… We cool? Sweet, let’s keep going.

I’ve come across two perfectly good, fully-functional printers out there and sold the two on Craigslist for a combined total of $200. What freaking up?

I’ve also come across a few pieces of art and furniture – some of which I kept, some I’ve gifted, and others I’ve posted for sale as well. I clean everything properly the moment it comes into my apartment and I’m avoiding buying new and contributing to the ever-growing need for MORE. It all feels all warm and fuzzy as hell and every time I score I feel like I’ve somehow cheated the system.

Bonus.

A while back I came across the skeleton of a papasan, sexy chair that it is. I haven’t been able to pin-point its origins but it screams mid century to me and my place looks like that era had way too many Old-Fashioneds and vomited its guts up all over the place. My kinda jam.

I looked around and came to realize you can’t really just buy the actual cushion and if you do, you may as well buy the whole shebang at that price range. I came across two blogs attempting to use old pillows and so I reached out to friends and family and asked that they give up the crusty old pillows they’ve been holding hostage for no reason. I was able to amass 5 and that seemed like plenty.

They look deceptively clean, don’t they?

The next step was to remove their covers and cut them into triangles and so I cut every pillow on the bias. God damn did that take a bit of time and hurt my fingers.

Shit – in case you started cutting and didn’t realize this would never work with feather pillows, I’m sorry and

 

I put them all on the floor in the shape of a circle to ensure it would work out.

Then I realized they may be too damn big and so I picked them all up and re-arranged them on the chair to ensure the completed cushion wouldn’t be too small or way too big and floppy.

Looks about right…

Next step was taking this beautiful tapestry I ordered on Amazon, putting it facedown on the floor and re-arranging the triangles on top, with the points all meeting at what I decided would be the center of the completed circle. I cut around as best I could, considering this can’t be an exact science with some of the pillows being way more susceptible to smooshage and such. I folded the completed cut out circle into four, folded a crappy old flat sheet of mine into four as well and cut out a shadow piece to use for the back of the completed cushion.

A little blurry artsy-fartsy shot for yas.

I lined the two fabrics up with the face of the material on the inside and sewed around the perimeter, save for a little room so that I can stuff the triangle pieces through and hand-sew the rest. Turns out you need to do a double-level, double-layer, otherwise you’ll feel every inch of the wood beneath you.

Heh.

Also turns out my boyfriend had an old papasan and he said the problem was still there even with an original cushion.

Light bulb!

I stuff his old papasan cushion in there along with the triangles (them being the top layer) and it is now the most comfortable spot in the entire joint.

I’m not saying you should go out and find a cushion, that defeats the whole purpose, but you should definitely get at least 10 pillows and pile them 2 high.

Ahhhhh…..

Soooooo comfortable.

You want some lip chap?

Flavor Flaaaaaaaaaaaaaaav!!

Last night I attempted to make lip balm because Accutane is causing me to overdose on the stuff and I cannot handle what pass for safe ingredients in lip balm nowadays.

I take it back, I didn’t attempt it – I OWNED IT.

I followed a recipe I found on Pinterest by Threaded Together and made a tiny change to it.

On her post, she lists:

Ingredients

1/4 cup coconut oil
1 tbsp and 1tsp of beeswax
essential oils or extract of your choice

Instructions

Melt the coconut oil and beeswax together.
Add the essential oils or extract of your choice.

Using an eye dropper, drop into container of your choice and allow to cool.

I read the comments to see if I could gain some insight from those who’ve tried it and I came across someone questioning whether or not it would melt on hotter days. I wanted a very firm lip balm to begin with – not unlike Chapstick – and so I resolved to use way more beeswax than instructed. I ended up using two tablespoons total, melted the wax and coconut oil in a double broiler (a Pyrex bowl atop a pot with hot water – making sure not to let any water get in the glass bowl) and divided up the melted oils into mason jars so that I could make different scents.

Please note that the melted oils will start to harden fairly quickly, so you have to work fast. I started out by trying to funnel the melted oils by use of a teeny tiny copper funnel, forgetting that the oils would harden ASAP and so a second later I had to scrap that whole idea. The funnel clogged, rendering it Walkman-level useless. Once I mixed in different essential oils to the different mason jars, I poured the concoctions straight from the jars into the empty lip balm tubes. Do this slowly and you wont have a problem.

Since the oils were hardening, I kept the mason jars in the pot with the hot water used for the double broiler. Genius! It kept the oils ready to go and I ended up with 13 tubes. I tried one of the lip balms about ten minutes later and it was perfect.

I apologize for the blurry picture – I threw an effect on there to make it bearable 😉 I didn’t think of making a post about it, I really only took it to show my friends.

Don’t know where to get the ingredients? I’ve been getting my essential and carrier oils from Piping Rock. Their prices are amazing – better than Amazon if you can believe it. I actually looked to Amazon first for the beeswax and the highest rated sellers all had negative comments noting that their beeswax smelled like cigarette smoke. Uh.. No tanks.

I went back to my favorite site and they had it – and for cheaper! Get into it, seriously – these guys have everything you could need to make your own stuff. I also bought my lip balm tubes from there and shock of all shocks, cheaper than anywhere else!