A few years ago I found this little, metal stand at an estate sale. I don’t think I even realized right off that it had a heart in the center. I just knew the top, the block of wood, was purple. Kind of an ugly purple.
Last year, I asked on the Just Vintage Home Facebook page for suggestions on how to change the wood to a better look. At the time I was thinking of painting. White with pink dots, pink with white dots and chevrons were suggested as well as other colors. I could never make up my mind and Valentine’s Day came and went. The project was put away.
This year, I suddenly knew what to do. Does it ever take you literally years to figure out what to do with something? The solution was to cover the wood in black and white, toile paper!
The paper is just normal, wrapping paper that has been hanging around for several years, too.
This how-to is picture heavy. I tried not to leave any step out. Also, it only shows how to cover the top and sides. Not the whole piece of wood. So, here it is: How To Decorate A Block Of Wood, Covering It With Pretty Paper
- Measure around your piece so that you have enough paper extended on the sides to fold under to the back, then trace around the wood on the wrong side of the paper. So you’ll know exactly where to place it later.
- Draw diagonal lines from the inside corner to the outside corner.Then cut. You’ll notice I had drawn lines extending to the sides. This is not necessary. I had to do this whole process twice ’cause I messed up the first one. Had the paper pattern going the wrong direction. Second try made me realize I didn’t need those extra lines.
- Using glue or Mod Podge place your piece face down on the wrong side of the paper centering it on the lines you drew in the first step. Be sure to smooth out the wrinkles as best you can.Yeah, I know that picture tells you nothing. Sorry. I’d just followed the above steps and turned it over to smooth out the wrinkles.
- Now it’s time to fold those sides. Choose one side to be the long side. It will glue fully to the wood. That doesn’t make sense? Maybe the next pictures will help with that. I hope.Apply the glue or Mod Podge, fold it up along the long edge and one corner. It will look like this:Next, fold and glue down that flap that’s sticking up.
Got it? Ummm… You might just have to do it for it to make sense.
- Fold in the corners of the “short” side as in the above picture. Apply glue or Mod Podge all over the wrong side of the paper here as well as the right side of the little folded corners.
- Fold them up and the result should look like this:
- The thumb tacks are there so I can flip it over to dry fully without touching anything and to prevent leakage or seeping or sticking to whatever surface it’s on.
And that, my friends, is that. It’s really not complicated or hard. It took longer to type this tutorial than it did to cover the block of wood.
