DIY Sea Grass Headboard

Out guest room needed a headboard, but our lack of budget didn't leave us with many options.  Plus, we wanted something a little on the tropical looking side to match the rest of the room's decor. Happily, I was able to meet both of these criteria by making a $2 seagrass headboard.  Yep, just two buckaroos!

I found a seagrass/straw (I'm not sure what the proper terminolgy is) beach mat for $1.99 at the Christmas Tree Shops and it was just what I needed.





I used a seam ripper to detach the flap of fabric that made the carrying case from the rest of the beach mat. Unfortunately the carrying case was stitched directly to the strip of green ribbon surrounding the mat, so the seam ripper took apart the green ribbon too.  But that was an easy fix as I was able to simply reattach the ribbon with some hot glue.



I could have probably just nailed the beach mat to the wall right then, but I wanted to make the mat a little sturdier and look more headboard-like, so I decided that the mat alone wasn't enough. Luckily, we had a big giant box our recycling pile which was perfect as a headboard backing. I removed the heavy duty staples from the box and flattened it to create a backing for the beach mat.  I cut the excess cardboard away so it was just the perfect size for the mat and didn't show behind it.


Then I simply hot glued the mat to the cardboard. I was surprised how well the hot glue adhered the mat to the cardboard as it created a really strong bond. With that, my headboard was complete!  Here it is standing upright (you can tell it's much sturdier than the floppy pre-cardboard mat in the photo above):



Next, I simply nailed the straw/seagrass headboard to the wall behind the bed. I used a common nail (yes, that's actually the proper name for the nail- I had to look it up) which had a larger flat head that kept the mat a little more in place.  I had to play around with the spacing a little and needed to rehang the art above the bed higher. Ideally, I would have hung the headboard higher to show off more of it, but the art is just to large and is already hung as high as I think it can reasonably go. I probably need some smaller art now, but I'm workin' with what I have.

Here's how the headboard looks in the room now.

And a before and after headboard look:

I love how the headboard turned out, especially for just $2!  I'm considering taking the headboard one step further and stenciling a pattern or tropical design (maybe a coral or palm leaf) to the headboard.  How do you like the headboard?  Do you think I should leave it as is or paint something on to it?

I'm linking this project to the DIY Showoff, Home Stories A to Z, House of Hepworths, Miss Mustard Seed.