I had seen quite a few fancy teepee ideas floating around the blogosphere, and then my mom sent me a link to a DIY tutorial of one that I loved!!
Unfortunately I didn't get my butt in gear quick enough to get it done for his birthday...but we finished it shortly after.
supplies:
-a LOT of glue sticks (I got these HUGE ones that are about 3 normal sticks in one...which is awesome, because then you don't have to change them out as quickly)
-glue gun
-a ton of fabric (I actually ended up with too much fabric, which I was surprised about...I got some donated from friends, bought some random sheets and curtains from Value Village, and scraps from Joann's in the States, when my mom went down)
-6 1x3x8's or something similar (The project I copied used 1x2x8's, but we couldn't find any that size).
-Some sorta drill thingy for the holes (I don't know what it's called, my hubby did that part, LOL) and some thicker twine or string or something to hold it together.
how to:
-I didn't cut any of the fabric until I was ready for each piece. (That way I knew how long I wanted each peice to be, and could decide which pattern worked best in sucession)
-My hubby drilled a hole 1 foot down from the top of each piece of wood.
-He then placed them all together and kind-of piece by peice added the twine and twisted it around.
(if you look here at the DIY we used, it goes into better detail about that part)
(FYI: this is not my hubby...ha ha...photo credit: thehandmadehome.net...I forgot to take pictures of the step-by-step process, so I just stole theirs)
(photo credit: thehandmadehome.net)
-Next we started wrapping the fabric, just cutting pieces of whatever pattern we wanted. We wrapped the first 2 or 3 small pieces around a few times before glue-gunning down...it kind of covered up a bit of the twine. The wood was also really small up top, so it would have been hard to do it any other way.
(photo credit: thehandmadehome.net)
-Once we finished the top, we did it a bit differently than the tutorial. We just couldn't figure out exactly how she had wrapped and glued hers. We just took a piece, wrapped it around approx. 2-3 peices of the wood, then glued it down to the wood, and cut the fabric.
-We did this for another 2-3 strips (making the strips different lengths)...until we got to the spot we wanted the opening to be.
-For the opening we cut a slit up the one piece of fabric and glued it back behind itself.
(this one is actually ours..you can see how the opening is cut, we dangled ribbon afterwards, so we can add some cute feathers to the end)
-From this part down we left an opening between the fabric, so the kids could go in and out without a door...you could always make a door too...we just didn't like that look as much.
-We continued to wrap different lengths of pieces, gluing and cutting as we went. Sometimes it got uneven, so we'd add a small strip in between 2 bigger pre-existing ones, so you couldn't tell as much.
(after the opening, we always left that space between the 2 front poles...I think it'll be harder for the kiddos to knock it down on accident)
-We also added a hanging lamp that we hang inside the top before we started gluing. I want it to be a "reading tipi", so I thought a lamp would add to that.
-I plan on adding a rug inside it, a cute milk crate full of books and some brightly colored pillows. If you look at the link, you'll see how hers looks in the end. That's the look I'm going for.
Ta-da!!
