KT Made It: Up-cycled Coffee Table

I'm really excited to share this project because it has been in the making for a while now, and today I had the chance to finally finish it! Most of my crafts have been made on the black coffee table that Eric and I bought from Walmart and put together when we first moved into our apartment (almost a year ago!). Needless to say it has some wear-and-tear...and quite a few smudges of hot glue, oops!

Two goals of mine with regards to crafting include: (1) utilizing things that I already have since arts & crafts can get expensive, and (2) making crafts to decorate our apartment, which can also get pricey. Based on this, the boring and worn coffee table has been on my mind to improve. I knew that I wanted to use my bottle of modge podge in some way, but I was having trouble coming up with a design. I also knew that I wanted to continue the theme that I had established with the candles I made using blue and orange as the color scheme. A friend of mine suggested a chevron pattern which I really liked, and I went online looking for ideas when I came across this beautiful orange and blue quilt square wall hanging on flicker:

LOVE it. My plan became to paint the table blue and use a pattern similar to this quilt with different patterns of blue and orange scrapbook paper for the borders of the table. And it turned out fabulous! Even my hubby was impressed :)

Here is the table before - boring!

I used Martha Stewart's Wild Blueberry multi-purpose satin acrylic paint.  I thought about sanding it before applying the paint, which in retrospect I should have tried since there was a glossy finish on the wood that required several coats of paint in order to have a smooth finish.

While the table was drying, I pulled out my patterned paper - 4 blue and 4 orange. I had already measured the dimensions of the table and determined that I needed 2x2" squares for the pattern. For the borders running lengthwise, I used the orange squares and then I cut the blue squares into triangles. For the borders running the width of the table, I used triangles as you will see!

Here is the pattern that I used for the shorter borders at the ends of the table. I used modge podge to apply the paper and then modge podged over for a finished look.

And here is the border running the length of the table

While the borders were drying, I applied a layer of modge podge to the top of the table to secure the paint.

And here is the table!

 

 I'm pretty much in love with my up-cycled table! Although it took some time to complete, it really looks great, and now I'm on the look out for some more ideas to continue decorating our living room.

Come back soon for my next did-it using the left over scrap book paper!