Humpday Home Decor: Decoupaged Bookcases [WIP]

If you follow us on Twitter or Facebook, you may have heard that we've been working on decorating bookcases.  We spent the better part of a day painting and decoupaging, and they already look pretty great.  They just need a few finishing touches (and to be moved to their permanent homes where I can get some good pictures of them that do not feature stacks of boxes in the background).  So they're still a work-in-progress.  But here's a preview!

Bookcase #1 got a light coat of matte brown spray paint.  We didn't worry too much about coverage, so the wood grain shows through a bit in places, as you can see here.  Also, we didn't sand or prime this one at all - just painted.  And aside from some funky texture on the edges - which was probably caused by the furniture polish we used to clean it before hand - it worked out just fine.  And we thought the texture was pretty cool.  If you're making a major color change, though, or you just want to make damn sure things turn out right, sanding and priming certainly never hurts.

The medallions here are cut from sheets of scrapbook paper.  If you're going to be cutting out little detailed things like this, do yourself a favor and get a pair of nice, small, pointy-ended scissors.  They are a life-saver!  Or at least, a hand-saver.

And of course, we used Mod Podge to decoupage the cut-outs onto the top and sides.  If you have never worked with Mod Podge, you are missing out.  Go get some now.  Get the big bottle.  Trust me, you'll want it.  This was Anna's first decoupaging venture, and now she wants to cover everything with paper.  I expect to wake up one morning and find her decoupaging the toaster.

But I digress.  Bookcase #2 received a similar treatment. This time we did sand and prime it, and I do think the primer made the painting easier.  Since the sides were black, I imagine it would have taken more coats to cover without the primer.

We decided to go with a steampunk theme for this one, as it's going in my soon-to-be-steampunk'd craft room.  So we painted it with that awesome hammered metal stuff that Rustoleum makes, in copper, of course.  Then we decoupaged it with cutouts of clock faces and gauges.

Yesterday I painted all of the front edges a nice antique gold, just for a little extra contrast.  Now I'm trying to decide what I want to paint on the sides to fill in those extra spaces.  I'm debating between random numbers - in keeping with the clock/gauge theme - and stenciling some fancy little swirly things.

I'm also experimenting with an edging for the cutouts that will hopefully make them look more "welded metal" than "glued paper."  And finally, once I pick up the necessary materials, I'll be making a stencil to add text to the top.  I was going to freehand it, but I'm too chicken.

So.  You'll be seeing these babies again once they're all finished.  And they are not the last of their kind.  We intend to do this with all of our bookcases.  So we should be experts by the time we're done.

In the meantime, we'd love to hear from you.  Have you tried anything like this before?  Revamped some boring old furniture?  Decoupaged anything interesting?  Leave us a comment!