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Monday, August 31, 2009

Decoupage - Refurbishing on a Budget



Who doesn't love free stuff, right? When we moved back to the states from Australia, we were lucky that my husband's family offered us many pieces of furniture. They had salvaged a couple of dressers from a neighbor and kindly delivered them to our house. They were perfect for the boys' clothes. At the time, the dressers fit in their closets so the fact that their color didn't match the rest of the room didn't matter.

Now that the dressers are out in the open, I really wanted to do something with them. Being in a frugal state of mind these days, I tried to come up with a way that I could refurbish them without spending any money. Then the idea hit me - I could use some old maps and decoupage the dressers to go with their travel theme!

As I started to work on the drawers, I realized how time consuming it would be to decoupage the entire dressers. I did some looking online and found pictures of others who had simply decoupaged the fronts of the drawers and painted the rest. I really liked the look. Of course, this means I will have to buy some paint (I am thinking red at this point), but I think I can do so fairly inexpensively. I am also planning to replace the drawer pulls so that both dressers will match (they are two different style dressers that were painted the same color) if I can do so for a reasonable price.

This was my first time trying decoupage and I was suprised at how simple it really is to do. All I did was cut an old map into pieces. I mixed some school glue (Elmer's) with a bit of water and glued the pieces of paper onto the drawer. Once the pieces were dry, I "painted" over the paper with the glue mixture. Let it try again, and repeated the process. You do that until the paper is smooth. Here is a sneak peek at where I am right now:


Two drawers down - seven more to go! I will post updates on my project as I go along.

For more frugal ideas, visit Life as MOM for Frugal Fridays.

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