Decoupage || Using Napkins on Wood Furniture

Hi.

[Insert rant about how terrible I am at blogging and how long it’s been since I’ve posted].

Okay, so, a few months ago  I saw this pin on Pinterest that stopped me in my tracks.

This isn’t usually my style, but goodness, it’s gorgeous. So I obviously clicked over to find out how Allison at Refunk My Junk created this beauteous thing. Her post led me over to Sweet Pickins Furniture where I got the full breakdown, which you’ll want to read if you plan on exploring this technique.

Y’all, napkins. It’s napkins Mod Podged onto the wood and then sanded down and sealed.

A-may-zing.

Armed with this new info and this amazing technique, I went out hunting for a garage sale beast to turn into a romantic, shabby-ish beauty.

I found this adorable little kids armoire at a garage sale in my neighborhood and stashed it in my garage for a few days. Then I got the info on the August’s edition of the Fab Furniture Flippin Contest…

The theme for the month of August is “Icing on the Cake” – the challenge this month is to create something with a little extra “oomph”. This awesome decoupage idea is certainly fit for this month’s theme AND this month’s contest is being sponsored by the fabulous D. Lawless Hardware Company. So, there’s more icing for ya. I met the sweet folks of D. Lawless at Haven in 2014 and fell in love with their Milk Green Jadeite knobs and pulls and have been waiting on a reason to order them. They were kind enough to furnish the hardware to those participating in this contest (but all opinions on their amazing hardware are totally my own).

This whole thing didn’t go as smoothly as I would have liked, but the end result is just totally adorable so I guess it was all worth it. I was using Allison’s dresser as my inspiration image so I thought I needed to stain my drawer fronts to be a little darker.

I started  by taping off the fronts of the drawers and priming the edges of the drawers as well as the edge of the door and the entire body of the armoire. Then I mixed together some paint leftover from some antique rockers I did recently as well as another similar color, all latex enamel(this is a chalk paint free zone).

Then I put down a thin layer of Mod Podge and pressed down my one-ply of napkin onto the drawer fronts and the armoire door.

Once dry, I used a straight razor to remove the excess napkin from the inside front of the door. On the drawer fronts, I just used sand paper in a “down and away” motion on the edges and it took off the excess napkin like buttah.

Then I started sanding.

Nothing crazy here, just some hand sanding with 220 grit. Above, the top drawer here was not sanded, the bottom one was. It looked perfect.

And then I went over it with poly.

Ugh! I thought it looked awful and I was pretty pissed. The hardware was just too gorgeous to put on this piece with it looking this way. I had painted the inside of the door prior to adding the napkins and really liked how that looked so I sucked it up and started over on the drawers fronts and the door.

I sanded down the drawers and the door front, laid more napkins on top, let it dry and then sanded. This time I sealed the drawer fronts and door with clear spray sealer in satin and the rest of the piece got a quick sand with 220 grit followed by a couple rounds of fine steel wool for a nice smooth finish.

Ahhhh, so much better.

Adorable isn’t really my style, but I just love this cutie.

And the hardware?!

Schtaaaahp it! Looks like the most delicious ring pop ever.

I got these napkins at Party City but found a ton of cute ones on Amazon and also Steinmart has a jillion different options.

Thank you so much to D. Lawless hardware for the delicious hardware!!! You can find the knobs right here and the pulls right here.

All of the other entries for this month’s contest can be viewed on the featured hosts blogs –  Evey at Evey’s Creations and Michelle at Dandelion Patina.

The Fab Furniture Flippin’ Contest is open only to the entrants who have signed up through the group Facebook page. If you are an active, furniture flippin’ blogger, and you would like to participate in future flippin’ contests, please contact Evey (info@eveyscreations.com) or Stacy (info@anastasiavintage.com) to get all the deets.

Okay, one more look…

Before:

After:

If I had this to do all over again, I would definitely not stain my wood first. I would also be a little more conscious of where my napkins are meeting each other. I had to do some extra sanding and scuffing in some places where my eye was drawn to the pattern mismatch – you could avoid this all together by getting napkins similar to what Allison had, with a steady repeat.

So, napkins on furniture, how do we feel about this?