Renewing a cabinet with decoupage

Retrieve a piece of furniture with decoupage

We are in the era of reuse: construction, architecture, design, clothing, are some of the fields involved in the recovery of raw materials that, if properly differentiated, can be reused to create new objects.

The basic concept is that you do not throw anything away before you are sure that there won't be a new use.


This happens especially in 'furnishings, with the proliferation of objects made ??of waste material or old furniture taken from closets or attics to which it gives new life through a good deal of manual skill and will.

And now with small restoration you can reproduce, as they were, vintage furniture of great charm and timeless lines, or, in the case of advanced degradation of the same is necessary to recover them turning to experts or by adopting decorative techniques can give relief to them a new look.
Among these, the best known is the decoupage.

What is decoupage

It is a decorative technique, whose French etymology indicates the action of cutting out.
Its origin dates back to the '500 in the eastern areas, while it is stated in the '600 in Europe with the more complicated method of lacquer which made furniture and embellished with decorations and coats of lacquer finish.
The style of decoupage radically changes and takes on the shape of today during the Victorians: revolved around a central print floral patterns, country scenes, images of children overlapped with each other at random.

From here it was a continuing spread, becoming for some a real passion: the technique allows to decorate furniture and objects with ease through the cutout drawings or strips of paper without any finish.

Initially decoupage only applied on the furniture; today is employed for the decoration of various objects and different materials, such as wood, fabrics, glass and metals, the canvases and the tiles.

There are also different techniques of decoupage more widespread: the painting, trompe l'oeil, decoupage paper with brushes or pastels, and with the decoupage on fabric.

Tools for decoupage

To decorate a piece of furniture with decoupage, is necessary to have a few small tools essential for a good result.
First you have to choose the nature of the print: you can use photocopies, newspaper cuttings, rice paper or even the simple absorbent paper.


The image will be trimmed with scissors and suitable to the support with glue diluted in percentages of water, applied with a brush. Ideal is the glue.

In addition to the prints on paper, you can also apply fabric, lace, ribbons, etc.
As a last finishing is necessary to apply clear paints.

Decoupage technique

The first phase consists in cleaning the surface of the cabinet so as to ensure the absence of powders or granules that may adversely affect the grip and final appearance of the composition.

Later we proceed to the cutout decoration to apply. To do this it is necessary to have pointed scissors and rounded able to ensure a precise cut of the same that will be applied.

The laying on the support will be guaranteed through the application of glue with a drop brush, pointy, round, etc, being very attentive to the possible presence of air bubbles that must be eliminated.

Once you pasted the decorations it is necessary to spread the glue on the whole surface of the support even if not affected by the presence of decorations.

Once the glue has dried, you can spend more layers of paint glossy, matte or satin finish that brings out the prints and highlights the possible decorations in gold leaf, silver or bronze that can be applied.

Choosing decorations

The decorative prints will be chosen based on the destination of the cabinet revisited.
Prior to the boom of the technique, the prints were few and expensive on the market.


Today, there are all kinds: nice and with comics for children's rooms, with maps, floral and retro for the bedrooms, with geometries or with reproductions of famous paintings for the living room, with fruit and other country scenes for the kitchen.

If you do not have a good manual, but you are still passionate about this technique, on the web there are many proposals for the sale of furniture revisited with decoupage.

These include the work of the decorator Melita Bellinghieri or Bryonie Porter.
The latter make and sell custom furniture, all exclusively hand-finished, with different prints and customizations.