Here’s my latest makeover project: a jewelry box.
Here’s what it looked like when I found it at a thrift store:
The grey pleather and the plastic handles were a little sad.
But when I opened the box up and saw the beautiful blue velvet interior, I knew it had to come home with me.
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.
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.
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.
I decided to remove the white plastic handles to make the box easier to decoupage.
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.
In the meantime, I started decoupaging.
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.
I used a plastic scraper to smooth out wrinkles and bubbles.
The drawer was the last piece I decoupaged.
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.
I didn’t like the silver color they came in, so I painted them before I screwed them into place.
The black knobs match the box’s new vintage/industrial vibe.
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.
Here’s what the jewelry box looks like now when it’s open.
Here’s the bottom drawer opened.
And here the box is filled up.
