This Month's Hobby

So I’m sure that you, like me, have those one or two household items that you have no idea where they came from of what to do with them?

For me, it’s MOPPE drawers from IKEA.

I seem to own three different units. I’ve always used one for my makeup, one for stationary, but the third one has always ended up full of odd bits and pieces, or as my dad would say, “guff”.

This last unit is the oldest, its sun damaged, stained, and generally didn’t look that appealing. So I decided to try my hand at decorating it.

What is upcycling?

The last few years have been dominated with talks of “upcycling” but what exactly is it?

Upcyling, is a spin on recycling, where you take something that you already own, and give it an upgrade into something that you will use.

The term is usually used when people have had the item for years but not used it, either because it’s use is not currently relevant (like for example having lots of spare storage boxes). Or because the item is broken and currently can’t be used.

Enter upcycling!

Take those spare boxes, clean them up and turn them into shelves.

Fix that broken chair so that it’s usable again.

That’s the joy of upcycling, its a wonderful way to combine creativity with practicality. And in my experience, that’s usually a combo that gets everyone on board.

I’ve wanted to try my hand at this for a very long time, but lacked the right furniture, the right inspiration, until now.

There are numerous articles, videos, and all sorts out there giving ideas and tips for how to do this. But all of them were using plain old monotone styles.

As I knew I wanted patterns I bought this box of acrylic paints and waited for inspiration:

As the unit I would be re-decorating is small, and I was planning on using it to store lots of my crafting supplies, I thought it was a bit of a shame to just paint it plain and leave it that way, so instead, I decided to have some fun with it.

I thought for a long time about how I could decorate it, until I had a thought.

I remembered my watercolour painting. And how much I had enjoyed painting mushrooms, and decided that painting mushrooms on these drawers could be great.

I did a little bit of searching and ended up using these painted drawers as my starting point.

Step 1:

Step 1 of the project was to clean the drawers.

I got everything out of the inside, then wiped down the sides with a dusting cloth, then I went back again with some product to make sure everything was clean and dust free.

I chose not to sand down the drawers as they weren’t varnished before, but this might be a good step to do next time.

Make sure that you remove the drawers as well!

Step 2:

First coat of paint.

I went for a white base layer, and used some bathroom safe wall paint as I had some left over.

If I do any more of these projects however, I will swap this for gloss paint, which is more designed for wood and would leave a better texture.

This first layer of paint doesn’t need to be a complete coverage. It doesn’t matter if its patchy, as long as its smooth.

I chose to cover all the insides first, then the outsides, so that everything didn’t get too messy.

Step 3:

Second coat of paint.

Here’s where everything really started to look fantastic.

The second coat of paint really brings everything together, it covers all those patches before, and just began to make the drawers look really neat and clean.

Again I worked just on insides then just outsides to make sure things didn’t get too messy.

I was particularly careful with making sure everything was smooth this time round. Paint drips could make the whole thing lumpy and not let the drawers slide in and out smoothly.

I actually ended up missing a drip inside the main frame and had to file it down with sandpaper so that the drawers could actually fit in smoothly.

Step 4:

This was the stage I had been looking forward to, but dreading at the same time.

I needed to sketch out my designs in pencil on the boxes.

While I didn’t end up sticking to these, it was still useful to plan out roughly what each face of the shelves was going to look like.

I did a slightly different design of mushrooms of each drawer. Then I planned out a giant mushroom on one side of the unit, which I later ended up switching for a mushroom house instead.

I used an HB pencil to plan these out, as it was the perfect hardness to leave a consistent line without being to hard as to scratch into the paint of the base layer.

Step 5:

Painting!!!

I decided to use acrylic paint for this stage, and bought a set of 24 colours. In the end I didn’t use all of them, but I’m looking forward to trying some other painting ideas with them so it doesn’t matter.

I went step by step and colour by colour as that is the method that works best for me, but this might not work for you so feel free to experiment.

First I painted the mushroom stems and the caps.

As you might have spotted, it took me a little while to perfect the colour mixing of the stems. Less is more is the advice that I’d give other people here.

I tried to be too clever and it didn’t work. I settled on dark brown and lots of white in the end.

After all of these were finished and dry I went in with the grass.

This was definitely the most satisfying stage. There isn’t really a wrong way to paint grass, so I just let each brush take me where it wanted to go, it was a great time.

Once I’d done a solid line of grass I went back with a fine brush and added some stems in the background in a light colour as well as some small ones at the bottom to add some dimension, not that I was going for accuracy here.

Once this was done I tackled the finer details, the snails, doors and windows of the house.

Then I went back with a super fine brush to outline the mushrooms in black.

This step was very much optional, but I personally love the outline look.

Final Thoughts:

I had a fantastic time making these drawers.

I loved the creative process that went in to them, and the practicality of being able to use them all the time.

I’m sitting right next to them as I type this, and I can’t wait to start the whole process all over again.

While there are some things that I would make sure to do differently next time, I’m pleased as punch with how these have turned out, and encourage everyone who’s got a piece of furniture like this in their home, to think about what you can do to upcycle it into something wonderful!