"Scrap-Furniture-ing"

Scrap-Furniture-ing: It's a lot like scrapbooking, only with Modge-Podge.

I have this coffee table that was in desperate need of a makeover. Oddly enough it's quite possibly the only piece of furniture in my whole house that I am it's original owner. I bought the coffee table when I was living in Oklahoma. I had a living room in my apartment and needed a table to put my plants! I bought the table at Target in Norman, I was thrilled to find that matched the style of the futon I had. I guess that was the style for put-it-together-yourself-with -a-hex-wrench furniture of the late 90s. I hauled it up to my apartment and put it together myself!

The plants, or rather my inability to water them so the Tupperware lid I'd put under them to catch the water didn't overflow, quickly did a number on the finish on one end of the table, but I'd always figured I could either replace the table or do something with it.

When I moved from Norman to Washington the table continued to have a central role in my living room. It continued to hold the plants and the spot didn't matter much because it had a plant over it.

When I moved to my house I inherited my parents living room furniture and both the table and the futon were relegated to the basement. Eventually I got a love seat from my parents that replaced the futon and that left just the table. Since it was in the basement the table was also stripped of it's "plant holding" duty as there is very little sunlight there.

So the table sat for almost 7 years. It would taunt me when I was on the treadmill. I'd look at it and see the perfect canvas for a project. What that project was I wasn't sure of. That is until inspiration finally hit a few weeks ago.

I'd been thinking the table was for sure a "Modge-Podge" project, but it was lacking a theme. Out of the blue it occurred to me that I have a whole bunches of pictures of my hikes in Shenandoah National Park, and I could make the table kinda like a scrapbook of those hikes! It kinda made me think of the trash cans my great-grandmother Maggie used to make with family photos!

I gathered a lot of "stuff" - maps, guide book pages, stickers, fancy papers from the scrapbook department at Michael's, post-cards, bumper stickers, and of course pictures. I even took a trip to Shenandoah just to gather stuff! I decided that I would paint the table itself a sky blue as a background.

As I got to work everything fell into place, and I ended up not using as much of my stuff as I'd anticipated, ended up using mostly pictures.

It was my 1st ever attempt at Modge-Podge - I think it came out pretty good. I need to work on making paper things not wrinkle, as the map got very wrinkled, oh well, nothing is perfect!

Here are some before, during and after pictures:

The table. You can see it's your basic oak table. You can see the big spot where the plant water ruined the finish.

Now the table is blue! :-) This pic doesn't really showcase the actual color well, it's dark in the basement and using the flash didn't help. It's a very pretty sky blue. I used American Traditions Interior Latex paint - flat finish. I figured that was cheaper and easier than using the tiny bottles of acrylic from Michael's. I just got a quart, but I have a bunch left over - the 2 dressers and the bookcase down there just might get painted blue! :-)

The finished table! The top is simply a collage of pictures that I have taken over the years. The bottom is the official NPS map (which you can see is very wrinkled from the Modge-Podge), postcards, and stickers. Both levels have a thick sealing of Modge-Podge!

Close up, as best I could, of the bottom shelf.

Close up of the top.

The whole thing was actually very easy. I have been scoping out the rest of the furniture in the house to see what else could be "scrapbooked!" Not only that but I found some glow in the dark modge-podge and some glitter modge-podge at AC Moore - there's a project waiting to happen! :-)