In my previous post I listed all the things I do in my freetime. As I also like to share the cool things I manage to make let me talk about my current project.
Right now I am making a laptop stand or laptop pillowboardthingie for myself. I first experienced how cool such a thing is at my friend’s place where she used the pillowboard to eat on, use laptop on and I am sure writing stuff or drawing is also very possible on such a thing. I instantly wanted one for myself, but as usually with me I don’t start to make the cool things for myself first, so I made one for my sister. Not sure if it was her birthday or christmas, but it was my very first pillowboard and I’m very proud of it. I wish I had some pictures. That was about 3 years ago so I decided that I need something like that too, especially since we always eat in the living room on trays that are uncomfortable in many positions.
There are with this one I’m making now 2 types of pillowboards I can write a tutorial about. First I’ll describe the one I’m making at the moment and in a later post (which I will link here if I don’t forget) I’ll describe the one I made for my sister.
What you will need for Model Reka (everyone gives fancy names to furniture, why not me. 
)
- A tray from Kika or where you can find it that looks like this and is made of wood
- Two pillowcases of the same size that are in measurements a tiny bit bigger than the tray. Don’t worry, they’ll fit in there perfectly.
- Acryllic paint in your desired colours, and in case you wish to do decoupage like me, decoupage glue and napkins, rice paper or something similar with awesome design.
- Velcro (tépőzár) which you will use to stick the pillow to the base of the tray but still make it removable, thus washable.
- polystyrene beads – also used for bean bag chair filling so you might want to get a bigger amount at once if you can and make a chair for yourself as well.
- stuff used for sewing (a sewing machine perhaps as that will make things sooo much faster)
- A stapler, but the handyman type not the office type. You’ll want to get short staples (4mm maybe – I only found 6mm ones) unless you find a tray which is made of thicker wood. Glue strong enough to hold the Velcro on the board. Staplers too risky. See update 1.
1.
What you’ll first want to do is decorate your tray. What is normally the bottom of the tray will become the top, so that is where you should put most of the design. I decided to paint the middle area a matte beige-nude colour and fade in a so called matte country-green which is a faded grennish blue, a nice pastel shade. Also as my pillow cases are dark blue I got a glossy dark blue paint to go on the sides and the bottom. (pictures later tonight)
You have to wait or the paints to dry and in case of decoupaging, probably you’ll need to put a top layer of see through lacquer over the whole thing. That is also useful as you are planning to use the thing daily and maybe sometimes you’ll want to wipe it clean too.
2.
The pillow. Choose the inner cover and fill it with the polystyrol beads. make sure you dont overdo it as you’ll want it to be lax and the beads need place to move so the pillow can take the form of your lap or anything you put it on. Sew the inner cover close and if the paint is dry, you can try out how it fits in the tray and how it will sit on your tighs.
now you’ll need the outer cover and the velcro. Sew the soft side of the velcro on the pillow case in the way you intend to fix the other side on the tray. It might be clever to first fix the tray part and then sew the other. I’m not yet that far so I’ll see what is best. -> definitely tray first
Put the inside in the cover and stick it on the tray. Tadaaa you’re done. (unless there is something wrong with the method I conjured up of fixing the velcro in which case modifications will follow – yeah there was something wrong, see update posts)
Model Petra is coming up later. In retrospect that might actually be easier.
Update1
Update2
Finished
