{Thrift Curio Shelf Makeover}

Last week, I shared my Thrift Frame Revamp and told y'all that it was part one of my three part series...

I found the small curio shelf in the photo for $2.  I just had to buy it when I found it because I knew it would be the perfect size to hold my puff paint and other small paint bottles.  (If you saw my craft room, you would probably say that's the least of my worries, but we'll save that for another post!)  

I wanted the shelf to be white, so I sprayed it with Krylon's Dual spray paint.

After I sprayed the shelf, I roughed it up a bit with sandpaper.  (Y'all know about my aversion to anything "perfect.")  As you can see in the picture above, I didn't worry about spraying the back of the shelf perfectly because I knew that I was going to do something special back there.  I decided to paint the back with Martha Stewart's pearl paint in a lovely shade of blue.

I could have stopped at this point, but what would be the fun in that?! :)  While visiting the thrift store on a different day, I found some awesome encyclopedias and dictionaries from the 50s.  As an English teacher, I just LOVE old books.  I cut pages out of the books (which, if I'm being honest, kind of hurt my heart a little) and used a craft punch to create cute little book page cutouts to layer on the back of the shelf.

I laid the page cutouts on the back of the shelf to create a pattern that I liked.  Then I simply glued them down with Mod Podge.  After the Mod Podge dried, I covered the back of the shelf with another layer of Mod Podge.  And just because I am a bit of a fanatic about making sure nothing I make gets messed up easily, I got out my Polycrylic and covered the entire shelf, including the back.

I really like using Polycrylic because it is water proof, doesn't smell as horrible and polyurethane, dries rather quickly, and supposedly won't yellow after time.  Plus, it's really easy to clean my brush after I use it.  (I'm not getting any kind of reimbursement at all for saying this.  It is truly how I feel.)  After the Polycrylic dried, my project was finished!  What do you think?

I love the blue paint on the back of the shelf.  The pictures don't really reflect the irridescence of the paint.  

The shelf is the perfect size to display small objects.  I almost hate to put my paint on it because the bottles will cover up some of the awesome book page background.  :(

It's hard to believe that this was a $2 shelf from the thrift store.

Now I just have to organize and decorate my craft room so that it will do my cute little shelf justice.