News, Advice and Resources for Thoughtful Pet People
I love this! Taryn Zychal had the great idea to take sad, broken umbrellas and transform them into cute raincoats for dogs. She has an etsy shop where you can get a coat for your dog big or small. Kitties aren’t left out because she even makes cat toys from umbrella scraps. Taryn was a finalist for the prestigious Cooper Hewitt People’s Design Award. She was also asked to make a couple of her coats for Martha Stewart’s French Bulldogs, Francesca and Sharky. Nifty!
I love this version of a pet bed made from a suitcase! The fun, green claw feet are inspired. And you can get two beds out of one suitcase. Don’t miss the tutorial for the Suitcase Pet Bed in the DIY Pet Bed Round-Up.
These are from Vintage Renaissance on Etsy. They don’t have any in stock right now, but it looks like they have them fairly often. Here are some of my favorites:
I’ve written before about some of the great things you can find for your pets at thrift stores & garage sales and I was reminded today just how much money you can save by recycling or repurposing things you find at thrift stores.
A bunch of the towels we use on the cats & dog had become pretty ragged & threadbare, but the towels we use for ourselves are still too nice to be relegated to the pets. I wasn’t about to go buy new towels for the 4 legged creatures, so I checked my favorite thrift store and found 4 thick bath towels for under $8 total, which is about the cost of one new towel.
I also needed a couple of glass bowls for water and found good sized Pyrex bowls for under $5 total that will be perfect. Pyrex is thick and pretty rugged so these bowls won’t get chipped or cracked. Sweet!
Here are some of the other things I’d try to find at a thrift store or garage sale before I bought them new:
Here’s a great project to re-purpose old sweaters and turn them into squeaky bones from CraftStylish. If you use a wool sweater, you should probably felt it first. If you don’t, then when you wash the finished toy, it may shrink into a MUCH smaller toy. If you use cotton or acrylic, it won’t felt. (Here are a few tutorials on felting, in case you need them: this one covers both hand & machine felting, here is a printable one on machine felting, and another on hand felting.)
You’ll need:
The second project is for a fabric squeaky bone toy. This isn’t a difficult project and the tutorial is thorough. You can get some fun fabric for this. If you want to be thrifty, check the remainder table at your fabric store or check for yardage at thrift stores. If you use a lighter cotton, you should use an inner layer of a heavier fabric like canvas or muslin. Upholstery fabric could make some neat toys and you don’t need to buy much.
You’ll need:
Fall is in the air here in the Pacific NW. It’s getting chilly and our cats & dog are finding snugly places to sleep. I may need to make a couple more small beds to keep the peace amongst the cats. Here’s the collection of posts on DIY pet beds.
A favorite spot for Sage is the bed I made from an old sweater. Here’s a great tutorial on how to upcycle an old sweater into a pet bed and you can check out how I made my version of the sweater bed.
Vintage suitcases make cute & clever pet beds. This post has a bunch of tutorials and examples of these fun beds.
I would consider learning to knit just so I could make some of these beds. You can knit & felt wonderful pet beds using the two great tutorials here.
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If you crochet, check out this pattern for crocheting & felting a nifty bed.
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You don’t have to be an expert in sewing to make this cute & easy nest bed.
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Some cats & dogs like to burrow more in their beds and this tutorial on making a hooded pet bed is perfect.
A hammock for your small pet might be the best thing. Here’s a post on how to make a hammock that can be free-standing or placed on a furnace to keep our pet good and toasty.
And if you need to get your pet off a cold floor, or if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere and need to keep your pets cool, this post shows how to make an elevated bed out of PVC pipe like Kuranda beds.
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