Little Jewelry Chest of Drawers Make-over

ReVamped and upcycled jewelry boxes and chests are always good sellers for me in my booth at the antique mall.  Finding the right pieces to make-over can be a bit of a challenge though.

The first thing I always do is look inside the drawers.  So many of the old jewelry boxes have that cheapo velvet fabric lining the drawers, and it’s usually stained and dirty and impossible to remove.  So I pass if the drawers (innards, as I like to call them!) aren’t clean.

The next thing to check for, if you are going to be repainting or re-covering your piece, is to be sure that the drawer pulls/knobs are removable.  On this piece that I recently made-over, I had already removed the drawer pulls when I remembered that I needed to take pictures!

A time or two in the past, I HAVE bought pieces that I could not remove the knobs from, and just painted the whole thing, knobs and all; but I avoid that as much as possible.  I just sand the paint off the pulls/knobs as much as possible in those instances.

How sweet are the drawer pulls on this piece!?!?

The insides of the insides of the drawers were clean and painted black, which was totally fine.  Except for the fact that I was re-painting the piece an off-white and the contrast was quite stark.  My solution?  Glue some paper to the inside bottom of the drawers.  I used old dictionary pages this time.  In the past, and on full size dressers/chests I have used; pretty wrapping paper, vintage wall paper, vintage sheet music, old road atlas pages . . . really, ANY kind of paper that you can cut to size will work.

I also added some of the same paper to the recessed bottom of the chest, just for fun!  Don’t forget to paint (or paper!) the BACK also.

Before and after.

*This piece has already SOLD in my booth at Stars Antique Mall in Portland, Oregon.

Upcycled beach treasure box

Just a simple, almost ugly, little wood box.

With a very BAD paint job I might add.  The paint was kind of ‘curdled’.  Bleck!

Not sure WHAT the deal is with the partially painted innards, or the raised parts on the sides???  But it IS ‘clean’ inside and paint will easily cover all of that.

It took a LOT of paint to cover that bright red; so instead of a THIRD coat on the inside, I added some pretty scrapbook paper.

And a white fingerling starfish on the top.  I HAD to leave this one ‘un-distressed’ due to the first coat being red.  I COULD have sanded off all that red paint, then repainted AND distressed.  But on a small project like this you need to be sure you aren’t spending more time than you can recoup in your selling price.

This one has sold already too!

Upcycled soap box

Hello, my name is aj; and I’m a ‘soapaholic’. 

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you’ve probably already figured that out!  I must confess that my addiction goes further than that.

I can’t resist ‘sniffing soaps’ at the store.

No, not the soaps in the soap aisle at the grocery store.  The ‘fancy’ soaps that come in pretty boxes.  Marshall’s is my favorite store for ‘soap sniffing’.  But I don’t sniff just ‘any soap’!  No ‘floral’ fragrances for me (except Lavender).  Other floral scents make me sneeze!  And I only like ‘neutral color’ soaps.I I was attracted to this box of soap because of the pretty box.  When I opened it and saw that it was PINK, I quickly put the lid back on and replaced it on the shelf withOUT even smelling it.  Because I don’t like pink soaps!

Just as I was starting to reach for the next box to open and sniff; the fragrance from that box with pink soap gently wafted by and it was AMAZING!  It smelled like a fresh strawberry pie.  I could NOT resist a full on sniff.  I HAD to buy it!

The soap itself went directly into my shower and the box to my craft table.  I especially like how the box was decorated with the baker’s twine.  (will have to remember that trick!)

I love upcycling these pretty soap boxes.  Usually I have to re-cover the entire box; but this one was already decorated so nicely that I only had to cover the ‘soap’ information.

I found some print scrap book paper that coordinated with the paper on the box to cover the front label.

Used a piece of the same paper to cover the bottom of the box.

There was a removable ‘riser’ in the bottom of the box that I wanted to leave in place because it SMELLED so good; so I added some of the same paper to it.

Easy peasey pretty (and fragrant!) little gift box ready to go!

Upcycled vintage candy box

Vintage wood candy box I found at an estate sale.

The top was fairly beat up.

Nice clean ‘innards’ though!

I would have guessed that it was maybe a cigar box; but the label on the bottom tells otherwise.

I sanded off the picture on the top with my orbital sander; then hand sanded the rest of the outside.  (it had a glossy varnish, so it HAD to be sanded before painting.)

Painted the whole thing aqua; then sanded.

BEFORE I had decided how to decorate the top of the box, I decided to use this pretty turquoise glitter paper on the inside because . . . well because I just got it and was itchin’ to use it!  (probably should have waited until I finished the outside first though!)

I selected this paper napkin for the top of the box.

This particular design ‘opens out’ to cover the whole napkin.  (not ALL decorative napkins do though!)

This was the napkin I wanted to use at first.

Alas, this design just repeats, limiting how it can be used.

The sheerness of the napkin allows the distressed wood to show though.  I used Mod Podge to apply the napkin to the box.

Then I glued a reproduction skeleton key to the front.

It’s available in my booth at Stars; along with several other upcycled little boxes!

Updated little cabinet

This little cabinet from the thrift store is one of those things that was intentionally distressed, but then had cracked and peeled even MORE!  I had to sand it quite a bit to get past the shedding stuff.

The inside was stained and in good shape, so I left it ‘as is’.

Hand painted (NOT spray paint this time) the outside a darker turquoise then my current furniture shade of aqua.

Distressed a bit with my orbital sander.  (I almost ALWAYS use my electric sander because my bad back makes hand sanding impossible.  But a smaller items like this could easily have been hand sanded to distress by a ‘normal person’.)

All of the decorative stamps I have were too wide to fit on these doors; so I used a design from one of my sign stencils.

Then stenciled PARIS on the top.

Cute little cabinet to store some little collectibles.

This piece is for sale at Stars for $24.00

A couple of distressed wood frames went to Stars too.

This little jewelry box is $17.00 at Stars.