I know, I know. Its been FOREVER since I've been on here. I've been pretty busy lazy and haven't really been doing a whole lot of crafty stuff. Then I discovered .99cent furniture at the Goodwill warehouse! For those of you that live in Maine, you need to go over there. Its in the Gorham industrial park. You can get a friggin couch for .99 cents. Also, they have tons of bins of clothes and everything is priced by the pound. I got an LL Bean winter coat there yesterday for $1.49. I can't even bring myself to go in to a regular Goodwill now becasue its pretty much a waste of money.
Anyway, on to my new project. Super easy. Anyone can do it and its almost impossible to mess up. I did this over 4 days for a few hours at a time while I had a Homeland marathon. If you have kids, this would be a really fun project to do with them. Keep in mind, it is a little messy so be prepared to have glue covered little chillins' running around your house if you do this with them. Also, if you're like me and have pets who get hair all over everything, you may want to sweep/vaccuum the room you're going to do this in and then keep them out untill you're all done.
What you will need:
- About 2 bottles of school glue (you could use Elmer's, but they all do the same thing, so any generic brand will work as well)
- An old book you don't mind cutting the pages out of . This can be a novel or a kids book with pictures, any book will do.
- A sharp knife (an Exacto knife or razor blad would work well, but I just used a super shark paring knife)
- A cheap small paintbrush
- A super thin tipped paintbrush (optional)
- A piece of furniture that needs a sweet and artsy face lift
- A mask for when you are sanding (you can buy one, but I just use a bandana
- Plastic gloves (optional)
- A thick marker or a short dowel. Anything round that you can roll over the pages once you glue them.
- Clear spray paint, sealer or a hardening resin (which you use is up to you)
Step one: Sand down your shit. If it has a gloss over it, the glue won't stick properly. You don't have to go crazy (unless there is a thick varnish on it, then it will have to all come off), just rough it up everywhere you will be gluing pages to. It goes without saying, but please do this outside and with a mask on. Wipe it down with a damp cloth after to get rid of all the dust. Then bring it inside.
(This is my before picture. I had already sanded down the top and got all the nasty yellow varnish off of it)
Step Two: Take your book and your knife and cut the pages out. Start as close to the binding on the inside of the book as you can get. Then if you want to cut the pages up in to smaller sections, you can do this now. I cut each page up in to three or four pieces width wise. I did them random sizes because I wanted them to be kind of funky. If you would rather leave them whole and glue them on, you can do that too, it just depends on how you want it to look when its done. If you are covering the whole piece or you have a large area to cover, its a good idea to use a longer book like a novel so all the pages match. If you're doing this on a kids piece of furniture with pictures, you could probably just use a number of books from the same author/illistrator and they will match. I used about 150 pages to do this, so you need a whole bunch if you're doing the layering effect. Its all about personal prefrence, really. I don't have a picture of this step, but I'm sure you can figure it out.
Step Three: Make your glue mixture. This is basically just home made Modge Podge. You could use the real stuff, but I'm cheap and would rather spent $2 on a thing of school glue than $8 on the real stuff. If you have Modge Podge, then skip these next steps. Dump a bunch of glue in to a bowl (I used a plastic one so I could just throw it out) and add some water until its thin. There are measurements out there for this if you want to be exact, but the world won't end if you just eyeball it. Add the water a little at a time, mixing it really well after each addition untill you get it a little runny. I added water untill it was still thick, but it would stream of of my paintbrush when I picked it up out of the bowl.
Step Four: Get to gluin'!! This is where the cheap-o paintbrush (I used one of the Crayola little kid brushes) and the gloves come in. The gloves aren't really necessary because the glue washes off with warm water, but if you're not in to getting your hands all gluey then the gloves are the way to go. All you need to do is paint a coat of glue on the back of a page and place it where you want it. Then take that marker/dowel and roll it over the piece/page to get out the air bubbles and excess glue. Again, you can place the paper however you would like. I did overlapping pieces all over. It took a long time, about 45 minutes to an hour to do a single side, but I think it came out well and was totally worth it.
Here is a picture of the top once I was all done:
Now just keep doing that to the spots you want covered. I think it would be cool if you just did the top and then put a resin coating over it, but as we talked before its totally all personal preference. Since I was doing it all over I waited in between doing the top and the sides. I just flipped it around on the floor to do it because I did it while I was watching television ha ha. I did the top one day, then did two sides the next, then flipped it to do the other two sides.If your table has a drawer/cubbord door on it like mine, you should take those off to do this, its much easier, I promise.
Sorry its a little blurry, but you get the idea.
After everything is all dried you can add some finishing touches. New hardware, painted details, etc. I used some cheap acrylic paint (your going to seal it after, so you don't have to worry about it chipping so its okay to use the cheap stuff. Why buy expensive paint when you can buy acrylic for $1.50? Again, I'm cheap so I would rather spend the money where it really counts) to do the trim. If you do this, that's where the super thin art brush comes in. Seriously, if you're going to do this please don't be like me and think you can do it without the right tool. Its a big ol' headache to try to get thin lines with a cheap ass paint brush. I messed mine up and it looked like Michael J. Fox did it in most places. It wasn't cute. The thin paintbrush will allow you to get thin lines without a ton of effort. .
Here is how it looked after painting the trim and proof as to why you need the proper tools. After the paint dried I cut some black pluming wrap and glued it over the black lines and fixed it so they were straight.
Step Five: After everything is completely dried (since I did a TON of over lapping, I gave it a few days to make sure it was dried completely) TAKE IT OUTSIDE and spray over it with your clear spray paint, sealer or put resin on it. As always, if you're going to use any aerosol spray, DO THIN COATS!! We're talking MISTING it. Its going to take longer, but its going to look better in the end. If you overload it, you're going to get drips and that's not cute.
I opted for just a paper sealer. The sealer is available at any craft store, I got mine at AC Moore for $5. You can get any brand, I've used three different ones in the past and they all came out the same. The sealer is going to simply seal everything together and make it stain resistant and keep it from yellowing. I didn't want mine to be all shiny so thats another reason I chose the sealer. If you want it to be shiny, go for the clear spray paint. If you want to be really fancy and use the resin on the top you can. This would be really nice if you were doing this to a table you use a lot (like a kitchen table or coffee table). The resin is the super thick clear coating they put on bars. It looks really nice, the only thing is that it is very, very expensive. It comes in two parts to mix together, the last time I looked it was $30 for a can of each part. It would be totally worth it and look really nice, again, all personal preference. If you use the clear spray paint or sealer you will still be able to set glasses on it and avoid the ring and it won't get stained if you are looking for a cheaper option.
Do you believe me now? Super easy and impossible to eff up. Also, super cheap. This whole project cost me $8.77. The most expensive thing I had to buy was the sealer and that was $5. The fun thing about this is that you most likely have most of the stuff laying around your house!
Now just place your awesome new refurbed piece of furniture where you would like it and enjoy!
Annndddddd here is a cute picture of my dog:
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