We're having another heat wave here in the Ottawa area and without air conditioning I've been moving in slow motion. Since the Tin Man was in a baseball tournament all weekend I decided to focus on reorganizing and moving the studio upstairs. This worked out well in this heat since mostly I need to be in the basement to do the reorganizing.
I've had four Ikea drawer sets for years and have never done anything with them. So while looking around for some interesting storage ideas for the new studio these shouted out for a new look.
I started off by pasting decorative papers to all the sides and the fronts of the drawers with gel medium. I do this by putting a layer of gel medium on the wood and placing a pre-cut paper on, then adding more gel medium to the top of the paper. This is a bit slow since it is somewhat slow drying but it just meant I could organize other things in between doing a few sides.
After it's all dry, it's time to take the sand paper to it. No it just wouldn't look grungy enough without a bit of sanding. All the edges and and corners were sanded.
And then of course a bit of antiquing with Distress Inks. I used my favourite, Vintage Photo. The sanded edges and exposed wood picks up the colours a little more than the paper for that great aged look.
I wasn't sure where I was going to put this so I even covered the back. This is a great piece since the drawers are square, letting me configure it in a number of different ways as you can see from the picture on the top.
Now to decide what to do with the other 3 sets. They're all a little different sizes and drawer configurations!
Happy Creating!
Wendy
