Miniature Vintage "Iron" Bed

 Most miniatures take a lot of patience.  This particular miniature, while it seems easy now that it's finished, took a lot of patience.  The beginning of it has been in the works in my head for months.  I wanted a vintage metal bed for my cottage.  The bedroom is an attic room and a normal sized bed is just too big and takes up the whole room.  I needed to make it.  I've tried on a few occasions to use glue, or fancy metal glue, and even once tried to get my husband to help fuse pieces together.  I felt like I was thinking too much about it.  So I let the project sit.  Until yesterday when a picture popped up on my Instagram feed and gave me the courage and the patience I needed to begin,,, again.  

For the metal head board and foot boards I used some wires left over from Chinese food take out boxes that my sister saved for me.   I used two wires for each end.  One of them the complete wire and the other I cut up into a second bar on the frame and three pieces as rungs.  

I am an avid Elmer's Wood Glue user so I got out my old faithful glue.  I don't know if it helped, but an IG mini-maker said once to sprinkle with baking soda also so I did that too.  Please see below.  Also, I didn't take a ton of pictures along the way because I truly didn't think it would work.  As Julia Child would say "I didn't have the courage of my convictions."

This picture also shows a piece of balsa wood that I wound up not using.  I instead used good old cardboard.  

Here is my piece.  Taped down, glued and powdered with baking soda.  I gave them plenty of time to dry (maybe an hour lol).  One of them wound up totally falling apart.  I knew I needed to use reinforcements... literally.

As you can see in the pic above, the wire has little feet.  I used a couple of layers of cardboard and stuck and glued the feet into the layers but not all the way through. 

I then used cross stitch floss where the metal was glued together.  I placed a dollop of glue then the end of a piece of floss and let it dry.  I then put more glue and carefully wound the string around and crisscross finally gluing the end of the string.  I let these dry and then began to paint.  So far they have held together well.

It's not perfect but that's the whole point.  I want this to look like a very old bed.  

I used brown and orange paint to make the frame look rusted and aged.  

  

I have one layer of lace trim for the dust ruffle here.

And here I have added another ruffle layer for depth and color.  And I also made a mattress this morning that I LOVE!

It's not totally complete yet.  But isn't it lovely???  The pink velvet throw needs work.  It might not stay unless I can tame it.  

If you like this bed semi-tutorial, please share to Pinterest below. 

Thanks so stopping by!!  XOXO