How to Decoupage Dresser Drawer Fronts

This past week, I rescued a damaged dresser from my backyard. You can read more about why it was in my backyard on the project page, but the dresser itself was still in fantastic shape. The drawer fronts however, had all bubbled and warped due to moisture damage. Still, I painted the whole thing with plans to do either a decoupage or wallpaper finish on the drawer fronts to hide it and that’s what I did with this project.

If you’ve never attempted decoupage or worked with mod podge, you will love seeing this because I’m going to show you exactly how super simple it is to use this on your dresser drawer fronts.

First, I gathered up my supplies including this really cute red rose motif craft paper that I thought would go perfect with my red buffet table. I picked mine up for .59 cents each at Hobby Lobby. Also, I grabbed my bottle of mod podge , a sponge brush, an exacto knife, my decoupage tool set and some Polycrylic to seal it all up when I was finished.

I removed all the hardware plus, for this particular set of drawers, I removed the carved looking inset piece because I wanted the decoupage behind it. I applied a nice layer of mod podge on the dresser drawer face and on the back of the paper and then applied to the face of the drawer.

I’ve seen other decoupage tutorials and many of them use a technique where they rip the paper up into pieces and then glue those around. I decided not to do that with this project. I wanted more of a wallpapered feel to these drawers with a more uniform appearance. Because I used this route, I applied the first piece on the left and then had to line up the piece on the right, so I did my cutting after the tops were glued. Then I cut all around it using a small 1/4 = 1/2 inch border so I could fold them in on the edges.

Once the pieces were in place, I did another thin coat of mod podge on top of the paper. Since the drawer fronts on these were fairly damaged, I knew I wouldn’t get a smooth perfect surface so I used this to my advantage and wrinkled it up a bit and left wrinkles in place so there was no single focused point of imperfection.

Once the mod podge dried…I left mine for about 5 hours, it dried to a nice clear finish.

One thing I noticed right away was that the red rose paper was a bit brighter than I had hoped for. The dresser these drawers are going into is painted a darker red and I had finished it with a black glaze which darkened it up even more. I knew I wouldn’t be happy with the brightness of the paper as it was, so I went ahead and also applied a thin layer of the black glaze that I used on the dresser directly on top of the decoupaged paper. Then I wiped it off with a wet rag and it had added just the right amount of glaze to darken the paper up to just the right shade to match perfectly.

Since these drawers would open and close quite a bit and be touched often, I decided to do a quick single coat of Minwax Satin Polycrylic to give it some durability. Using a bristle brush, I applied a thin even layer of the polycrylic to the front of the dresser drawers and then let it sit for a few hours to dry.

The last thing to do was to replace the insets and the hardware and replace the drawers into the dresser. I absolutely LOVE the finished the result.

What do you think?

Attention! I am no longer writing new articles here at PaintYourFurniture.com. All of my articles and content have been moved to my new blog DIYHomeInterior.com which includes furniture painting plus TONS of other home decor DIY projects and ideas. You can find this article there as well so click here to go to DIYHomeInterior.com