First attempt at altering furniture - my vintage craft desk

Wow, just seen its 3 1/2 months since I last blogged, that was mainly due to my pc hard drive crashing just 11 1/2 months after we bought our new pc, luckily it was in warranty and is now fixed.

Its been a disruptive year at home as we had the bathroom and kitchen completely renovated as well as all new insulation in the loft, so all the excess items we had no room to store anywhere in our small home ended up in my craft room which I renamed our warehouse, I hadn't had the energy to sort it during the damp winter months but hubby needed vital paperwork from somewhere in my room so 2 weekends ago I asked him to help me completely empty my craftroom, with him doing most of the lifting. As I am an avon lady, I always keep lots of boxes for temporary storage and we took everything into our huge bedroom and sorted it roughly into craft, photos, paperwork, miscellaneous, rubbish, recycling and charity, so now each box of which there are very many only has one category and I wont bring any boxes back in my room til they are sorted into exactly what stash they contain.

Also as the room was almost empty, except for pc desk and chair, 3 bookshelves with craft stash on and my large craft desk, it was the perfect time to completely redecorate the room, when it was Carrie's it was a pale pink but I prefer classic cream as its neutral, so far I have painted almost 2 walls and about a third of our bare floorboards which I love, also have them painted in our bedroom.

A few years ago a good friend gave me her old large office desk and it has served me well in 3 locations in our house but it was always dominant being made of dark wood laminate, so I had the idea to paint it whilst I was decorating, but it didn't seem right so a couple of days ago I came up with the idea of decoupaging it with vintage papers, many of which I bought last year in Canada and had in the main not used, the following photos show how far I have got so far.

                                                  1. Desk just with undercoat of paint

2. Drawer fronts covered with Docrafts Madam Payraud's 12 x 12 paper and some paper from unknown maker, bought in Canada.

3. Second set of  drawer fronts covered with unknown papers and Recollections Signature 'Always Remember' 12 x 12 papers all bought in Canada.

 

4. Initially I used pva glue to stick the papers, but that was a total disaster as the papers bubbled badly so had to scrap several sheets, before using Affixit Craft permanent DST tape runners, and will do a couple of coats of clear varnish to protect the surfaces. On the desk top I have laid the 12 x 12 papers out in a rough grid but overlapped them all to make it less formal and also used partial pieces of the papers or vintage adverts cut out from Madam Paynaud's papers and sayings from the 'Always Remember' papers to personalise my desk.

 

5. More of the same papers but also a 12 x 12 paper from Docrafts Portobello Road and more sayings from 'Always Remember'.

6. Mainly papers from unknown makers bought in Canada.

6. Desktop fully decoupaged.

7. Full view of desk with drawers, all decoupaged. Still have to paint the sides and back of the desk which are visible.

I have really enjoyed the creative process of this first attempt at decoupaging furniture and am very happy with the result so far, thanks for any comments you may leave, Fi xx