Upcycling with Currys: Drumming to a new beat

I stepped out of my comfort zone the other day and tried my hand at some upcycling. I’m usually great at coming up with creative ideas, but haven’t made something by hand in a very long time. When Currys invited a group of bloggers to upcycle their washing machine drums I felt I HAD to give it a go, if only to see how on earth they planned to change these silver drums into something worthy of taking out of the centre.

The event took place in The Old School Club in Battersea, South London. I drove down to North London and spent the night at my parents. Then made the remainder of the journey fresh faced and bushy tailed the following day. The drive through London was more traumatic than I’d thought it would be. After months of hardly coming into contact with traffic lights, only using my car to go to and from the village to the neighbouring town when a Tesco shop was in order. Or to the train station on the way to work, driving through central London was a bit of an ordeal. But I have to say it proved to be well worth the trip.

Creating footstools from washing machine drums

I met loads of lovely bloggers. There were three of us in the footstool club. I need to think of a much catchier group name for us, preferably one without the words foot or stool in the title as neither have particularly glamorous connotations, but until I do, we’ll put up with the footstool club. My group consisted of Sam who blogs at Honey Go Lightly and Katie from Toodaloo Katie  both of whom I’d met for the first time that day. We all got to work on our individual upcycled washing machine foot stools whilst be really supportive and having a good laugh.

To make my footstool we painted a washing machine drum. Whilst it dried in the corner, I attacked a round wooden board with spray glue, animal print fabric, foam and a staple gun. I had so much fun but it was hard work stretching out the fabric enough to turn a straight edged piece of foam into the curved sexy beast you see in the photos.

Hard. Sweaty. Work.

Which makes it all that more satisfying to be writing this post on my laptop with my feet resting seductively against said footstool. I’m even wearing animal print pjs to compliment it….

The finished washing machine drum footstools

Who would have thought that a washing machine drum would be such an ideal component to upcycle into a footstool? Or a lampshade for that matter? It was a real eye-opener seeing just how cheap and relatively quick it was to make something genuinely useful out of an object that would have been bound for the scrap heap or recycling centre.

Thank you so much to Currys for hosting me and the other bloggers. I’ve learned a new skill and I’m already looking for a new project to tackle.