Painting and Decoupage: My latest project

I have been working on this project over the last 2 weeks and am really pleased with how it has turned out. I have this old dresser, desk, and shelf that I have had in storage and I am going to fancy it up and move it into my guest room.

We are having a college student live with us for a semester while she goes to school so I wanted the room to look nice. This dresser is from my childhood, in fact it was my dresser all my growing up years. I had a lovely canopy double bed that matched it and I acquired the desk at some point in high school from a garage sale. Its the old while with gold trim style that was HUGE in the 70s. It was cute then but now it just looks dated and it is a little ruffed up from storage so it needed a new life. I decided that I would paint it white and then I wanted to add a little more so I decoupaged this lovely fabric on the top. I really like the way it has turned out. I think I need to do a few more little things, I think I will put a few black touches on it as well to match the toile-ish bedspread. But, since I have been MIA, I thought I would at least show you what I have been doing.

I put on 2-3 coats of the plain white and then put down a layer of modge podge on top, placed the fabric down and removed any wrinkles or bubbles, then topped it with probably 3-4 coats of modge podge.

So, if a piece of furniture is getting a little tired looking, paint it and decoupage! Its so fun! (After, of course, making sure it is not some priceless antique from the Elizabethan age or something.)
Have a great weekend!
Heather


Desk before.....
dresser before (with most the drawers removed)

drawers before

Shelf before

desk painted with decoupage

dresser painted with decoupage

I will get the final product done, hopefully this weekend, and put up some pictures. It was actually really easy!

Craft-Modge Podge on a Metal Star

When I was in Utah for Christmas, my sister in law showed me a project she was working on. It was modge podging pictures onto those large decorator metal stars that you see in the craft and decorator stores. I think its a really fun way to give someone a "scrapbook" of pictures. Once you have all the pictures where you want them, then you put layers of modge podge on them and let it dry and it becomes all shiny and cool looking. I did some googling and found some pictures and links so I thought I would share with you...

This one was done with pictures and scrapbook paper and it was a Mother's Day gift, the link to this blog is http://all-about-scraps.blogspot.com/2008/06/altered-metal-barn-star.html



Here is one that was done with just scrapbook paper and no pictures. I think it makes a nice door decoration....I may have to do this for my door!

The link to this one is here http://burgessandamy.com/2008/12/06/christmas-crafts/ and she also has instructions on how to do it.

On this same blog, she also did some wooden blocks with modge podge and I thought they were cool looking as well.

Thanks for the great ideas Amy!

Craft-Modge Podge & Papercraft

First off--Please ignore the messy table in the background...you don't really see that, its your imagination playing tricks on you! (I was taking a quick picture to send to my sister to see if she thought my secret sister would like it and I didn't bother to take a nice pretty picture before I gave it to her, so these are my only shots. Oops! I was scrapbooking and packing and making things all at once so there is quite a hodge podge of crap on that table! Sorry! And sorry for the use of crap if you don't like that word.)

This is a sample of taking something you would normally throw away and making it into something really cute! This is a cream puff container, the kind you buy at Sam's and can never eat just one, it comes with like 50 and they are yummy and great fro parties...I digressed to cream puff heaven there for a second....anyway, I took this container and cleaned it and removed the side labels, the top one isn't removable so I just covered it up. Then I took scrap booking paper (this paper is from the Bella Rose Designer Series with Stampin' Up!) and used Modge podge to glue it to the container and then I went over the paper with Modge Podge so that it would be sealed and shiny. I thought this turned out super cute. I also covered a peanut butter jar (plastic) and a pickle jar (glass) in matching colors and gave them all as a little ensemble of gifts. I filled the peanut butter container with M&Ms.

This was for my "Secret Sister" gift at retreat and she acted like she loved it so I can only assume she does! We do secret pal type things at retreat and its really fun to see what people come up with. This one was a hit!