How to Decoupage a Bookcase to Give it New Life

Let me just start out saying…I’m desperate.  Desperate for storage that is.  This house has made me excited and has made me want to pull out my hair.  Did I mention we used to have a much larger house?  One that had a bonus room over the three car garage to hold all of the kid stuff that seems to multiply while we sleep.  Ahhh…the good old days.  I just keep reminding myself that we live on an island and this is the trade-off.  Without further delay, here is the “after” of the decoupage bookcase I saved from the brink of disaster.

It didn’t start out looking so wonderful.  In fact, it’s been in the “family” for nearly 20 years.  It’s first incarnation was in my niece’s room when she was just 2 (now she is finishing college).  It was sweet with stenciled pink and white ribbons on it that went with her Laura Ashley bedding.  See…here are the remnants of that.

Then it moved into the total utilitarian phase.  After my niece was finished with it, it went into my parent’s garage to hold coffee cans of nuts and bolts and other various garage “stuff”.  Look how beat up it became.

Then, I came along and saved it.  I wouldn’t have if it had not been for the fact that it had the perfect measurements, 11x18x72…wooo baby.  I couldn’t go any wider because I needed two of these bad boys to flank what will be my son’s twin trundle-bed (when he is ready for it).  Did I mention how small our house is?  Oh ya, I thought I had.  So I sanded, scrubbed, primed with Kilz, and painted the whole thing white.  It still wasn’t looking good.  The interior of the cabinet was in fairly good shape but the sides had been beat up so bad I couldn’t get a nice smooth finish.  Then it hit me.  Decoupage!  Now I have seen some tacky decoupage in my lifetime and set out to plan decoupage that looked more current.  I randomly started walking though my local craft store and saw this punch.

It reminded me of the vintage tiles you see on bathroom floors that have become all the rage again.  My mind started spinning and I hit the scrapbook paper isle and settled on the orange and blue color scheme.  Then I had to sit down and punch out a ton of those little hexagons.  My forearms are still sore.  Once that was completed I grabbed my bottle of Mod Podge and started by “painting” it on in small areas to give me time to position the pieces before it started to dry up.

I started at the top of the bookcase and found the center point.  I put the first blue hexagon there and placed the next blue, then orange, then two blue, and then one orange.  Then I would fill in the two rows of solid blue by just eyeballing where they should go.  I kept going back to the center row and measuring that I was still going straight.  When I glued them on to the edges I had a little over hang.  I used a sharp razor blade to trim the edges off (be very careful with this and keep out of reach of little hands).

Once the whole bookcase had the hexagons glued down, I gave it two coats of Mod Podge over the top to seal it.  Don’t worry about the cloudy appearance.  It will dry clear.

At this point, you could choose to put a coat of poly over the top and I would if it is going to be used quite a bit.  Since it was the sides of the bookcase and wouldn’t be getting any direct abuse, I thought the Mod Podge on its own was okay.  I then took the two bookcases (yes, I did this twice) and put them in the room flanking his crib.  I anchored them to the wall using small L brackets just to make sure they never tip over on the little guy.

Then the fun part!  Styling them!  I love setting up little vignettes that go along with the books we read at night.  Like this Thomas the train one and the dinosaur one you can see below.

The little guy can hardly wait to start playing with his toys and reading his books.  It’s great to have everything out where he can see it.  I rotate toys and books out every few weeks.  I find when he can see his toys he is more apt to play with them then when he has to dig through a box.  Here are more shots of the new decoupage bookcase.

Nancy