A little box with paper covered drawers.
Another project done! Awwww…. you got me. I see the look of skepticism on your faces. And you’re correct. As of this writing I have one more step before calling this project totally finished, but it’s just putting a finishing coat of wax on, so for blog purposes… I’m calling it done. 🙂
A couple of years ago I brought home, from an estate sale, two small, three drawer, wooden, boxes. I had a general idea of what to do with them, but typical of me, it took a while to start the process. Also typical of me, I didn’t get a before picture. This is the story of one box. The other is painted, but waiting for more inspiration.
My idea was to paint the box white and decoupage paper onto the front of the drawers. Certainly not a new idea. I was inspired by many others I’ve seen out there in Blogland.
First, I’ll show the shell after it was painted:
I didn’t think it was necessary to paint those edges because……??? That proved to be a mistake, as you’ll see a bit further down. But I do want you to take note of the wood inside. It actually looks a little better in the picture, but the whole box was that wood. That cheap, thin wood, stained an unappealing color. Hence, the need to paint.
That done, I chose the paper. I used scrapbook paper and with Valentine’s Day coming up, decided to use pinks. These were in the same pack which took the guesswork out of coordinating. (Although, I’m certain I would never have chosen those three papers myself.)
I cut each piece to fit the front of the drawers and used Mod Podge to apply them. I coated the back of the paper with Mod Podge and stuck the paper onto the drawer front. Glue would work just as well as Mod Podge. Once they were dry, I lightly sanded with a fine pad to distress the edges and take some of the finish off the paper:
The edges and corners looked like this when finished sanding:
For some character and depth, I rubbed stain over the fronts:
Yeah, the picture was taken before actually rubbing it down, so it doesn’t look much different from the picture above it. Silly me.
Next I punched little holes through the paper where the original knob holes were. They were clearly visible from the inside and I used… well, I don’t know what that thing was I used. Just something in my massive collection of tools, I think it was a dental tool of all things. It was basically a needle with a handle. A large diameter needle will do fine.
Put the little knobs back on and this is the result:
Oops! Not good. At all. This is when I realized my mistake of not painting the edges of the box and drawers. And, although it doesn’t look so bad in the picture, the white of the top and sides just wasn’t cutting the mustard. I’m sorry, but it simply wouldn’t do.
What to do, what to do? There was a color decision to be made. So many choices would have been fun. We sell General Finishes Milk Paint and I could have chosen Lime Green, Coral Crush or perhaps Patina, but I decided to use Dark Chocolate.
Normally, I’m leery of painting wood brown. It reminds me of the old furniture that people painted brown thinking it would mimic the look of the stain they were painting over. That brown was always so ugly. But to help me over my caution and to show the color to people shopping whichever booth this goes to – and because there was a can open and handy – I used it. I’m very happy with the result.
The little box is just the right size for note cards, pens and pencils, jewelry, etc.
I didn’t do any distressing to the box itself. Just one coat of paint. I liked the way the white shows through the edges and decided to leave it.
And there it is. If I can do it, you can do it! Other than inertia, the biggest hurdle is finding a box, but wooden jewelry boxes abound in Thriftland. I’d love to see you do a jewelry box like this. I’d love to do a jewelry box like this!
