PROJECT 11: Decoupage

I think decoupage is my favorite project so far. I like being able to do art on a bigger scale. I started with this cabinet:



As you can see I wasn't too sure about this undertaking. First of all, although the cabinet is a mess (this picture doesn't show all the stains) it is a sturdy and useful cabinet that I was afraid of ruining. The cabinet also has a history. My college roommate and I bought it together our sophomore year because we had rushed into renting an awful, dirty, apartment, hasty as we were because we were afraid this lovely almost-crack den might be swept up if we didn't act fast. We ended up needing the cabinet because the kitchen was the size of a closet and we had no counter or cabinet space. So I sat down with a screw driver and put the entire thing together and was very proud of myself for being able to do it. I think I was doing that while my roommate was plucking out the mushrooms that were growing out of the bathroom floor. And I am not joking about the mushrooms.

Then the cabinet made its way out to Denver where it has been a tv stand, a stand for a fish tank and finally a cabinet stuffed in a closet for all the things we should have probably just gotten rid of because we couldn't really access any of it anyway. Well now that I am a master gardener, I need a cute cabinet for my pots and potting soil that I can put on our back porch. I thought this wonderfully accommodating cabinet might do the trick.

So after emptying out the cabinet of phone books and batteries, I found some scrap book paper that I bought from Target awhile ago. The only thing I had to buy for this project was Mod Podge so that was a plus. Then I had a great time mapping out a pattern, I enjoy the measuring and the planning. I would highly recommend laying it all out before actually gluing the paper to the furniture as seeing it laid out may give you ideas on what might look better.

Throughout the process of adhering the paper to the cabinet I was at once nervous and excited. I was sure I was going to make a mistake but I also became entrenched in the project. I love those kinds of therapeutic projects where you don't think of anything else, your attention totally focused. I got so carried away that I imagined myself a sculpture artist working in my barn while wearing a flannel shirt and having big unruly curly hair, when in fact, I was actually working in my pajamas in my laundry room with very straight hair to glue paper to a wood cabinet. I suppose one can dream.

The only problems I encountered were with bubbles forming once I laid the paper on the cabinet. Ms. Stewart suggests using a brayer to even out the paper and get rid of these bubbles but I found that a brayer only made it worse. In fact the first drawer I did has terrible bubbling and I attribute it to the brayer. So instead I just tried to be very careful to lay the paper down evenly.

So now I have a gardening cabinet I can proudly display on my porch. This is the final product: