Craft Storage Unit Upcycle Project

Thursday 4 January 2018

Today I started to paint the second of the units I intended to use to organise my craft supplies.

I was extremely pleased with how the first unit turned out and plan to do exact same to the second unit.  Only this time I remembered to take a before shot at the beginning of the project and thought it would be the perfect first project to track my progress on my blog from start to finish 😳

Both units were kindly donated to me by my friend to help organise and store my out of control craft supplies. I had seen a newspaper decoupage bookcase on a youtube tutorial and decided to upcycle the units to look like a pair. Both units were matching in design but the first unit had a pink drawer unlike the one below I have just started.

Now I have discovered YouTube tutorials it is the first place I check for DIY alternatives and ideas.  Watching tutorials while I’m working on other projects also sparks different projects I want to try and this is what drew my attention to DIY chalk paint recipes.

I first attempted to use normal children’s chalk by grinding it down to a powder and adding it to a cup of white satin paint but it just went extremely runny and that’s when I realised they had mixed the powder with water before adding to paint in tutorial.

Not wanting to wait the couple of days for an Amazon delivery I attempted to use the talcum powder version and it thickened the paint as expected and made paint  go much further and only required 2 coats for the unit to look refreshed.

I have never used store bought chalk paint before so I am not sure of the differences but for my personal use I was happy with the end result. I have noticed that I haven’t been able to make another batch that seemed as effective as the first batch. Again fine as I am happy with the end result and it won’t be listed for sale. I am also going to order calcium carbonate as everyone I watched said it was the closest to the real thing and easier to work with than.

The unit now looks like this:

After 2 coats of my talc chalk paint alternative .

I will hopefully get to finish the coats of the areas not being decoupaged tomorrow and start the decoupage at the weekend.  The paint does dry really quickly compared to other paints but I still like to let it dry overnight before applying glue and paper.  I might post a progress picture tomorrow evening but the next noticeable change is after the first layer of decoupage has been applied but I am sure I will have something else to blog about as I have a few ideas in mind to increase my Etsy Store products.

Friday 5th January 2018

Having planned to launch my blog last night I had clearly forgot how time consuming organising photographs and store listings could be.  I didn't get as much of the unit sections not being decoupaged painted as I spent most of yesterday organising my photographs etc.  The paint dries extremely quickly though and I can decoupage tomorrow as planned because these sections did not need to be painted again.

I am also going to the charity shop tomorrow to see if they have any interesting things since my last visit and will hopefully have some new decoupage projects to enjoy x