Makeover | Decoupaged jewelry box

Here’s my latest makeover project: a jewelry box.

decoupaged jewelry box

Here’s what it looked like when I found it at a thrift store:

exterior before
The grey pleather and the plastic handles were a little sad.

interior before
But when I opened the box up and saw the beautiful blue velvet interior, I knew it had to come home with me.

jewelry box handles
I figured I’d decoupage over the pleather and see if I could find replacement handles, or at the very least, put a fresh coat of paint on the old ones.

idea-ology tissue paper
When I dug through my crafts cache to see what I could decoupage over the box, I unearthed this roll of idea-ology tissue paper that I had bought a few months earlier just because I loved the design on it.

painting before decoupaging
I basecoated the box with white paint to make sure the grey pleather wouldn’t show through the semi-transparent tissue paper. The blue inserts popped out easily so I was able to get paint into all the nooks and crannies inside.

basecoated jewelry box
I decided to remove the white plastic handles to make the box easier to decoupage.

jewelry box handles
Most of the pegs on the backs of the handles broke off as I pried them out, so I wasn’t going to be able to reuse them. I wasn’t sure at that point what I would use for replacement handles, but I figured I’d cross that bridge when I got to it.

decoupaging with tissue paper
 In the meantime, I started decoupaging.

decoupaging with tissue paper
I used watered-down Elmer’s glue for decoupage medium, painting it onto the box one side at a time, wrapping the paper around the corners as I went along.

smoothing out wrinkles while decoupaging
 I used a plastic scraper to smooth out wrinkles and bubbles.

jewelry box decoupage
The drawer was the last piece I decoupaged.

replacement knobs for jewelry box
 I couldn’t find any replacement handles with the pegs the right distance apart to fit into the holes in the box, so I ended up having to use some screw posts I found at Menards.

replacement knobs for jewelry box
I didn’t like the silver color they came in, so I painted them before I screwed them into place.

new knobs on jewelry box
 The black knobs match the box’s new vintage/industrial vibe.

jewelry box makeover
By the time I had the last piece of tissue paper adhered, my glue bottle was empty, so I finished the box off with a couple of thin coats of matte-finish polyurethane for protection.

jewelry box interior
Here’s what the jewelry box looks like now when it’s open.

jewelry box blue interior
Here’s the bottom drawer opened.

jewelry box blue interior
 And here the box is filled up.

jewelry box blue velvet interior

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