Wallpapered furniture

Bryonie Porter's wallpapered furniture is just lovely -- I wonder how hard this would be to do at home?

Bryonie Porter beautiful wallpapered furniture (via Babygadget)

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I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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HowardsGrl

These are very cool…and I think even getting the appropriate drawer pulls picked out and put on would be too much of a challenge for me – not only applying the wallpaper!
HowardsGrl

These are very cool…and I think even getting the appropriate drawer pulls picked out and put on would be too much of a challenge for me – not only applying the wallpaper!
Anonymous

I do a fair amount of decoupage and collage but have never covered a piece of furniture. Given the endless variety of papers, the possibilities are endless. Once the finished piece is given a couple of coats of poly medium or varnish they are reasonably tough and could be wiped with a damp cloth.

As for the piece shown here, it is not exactly my taste but I certainly admire the workmanship. Personally I would have used plainer knobs, in one of the colors from the paper, rather than the fussy brass pulls because I don’t care for the color contrast and the paper itself is so fussy that a more simple pull would have worked better, in my opinion. But that’s just me.
waitinthecar

Um, no thank you. That desk is… yikes.
Saskplanner

Can’t be that hard – my condo had everything wallpapered when I got it. Cabinets, doors, drawers, etc. But I suspect that it’s that that durable unless you use special glues but when it starts to wear out it would be a nightmare to re-do.
Anonymous

Decoupage! Durwin Rice has a great book on it and blogs about it .. http://www.durwinrice.com/ and http://newdecoupage.blogspot.com/ .. you can really do some great embellishing of surfaces with humble paper. I’ve cut up posters and old illustrated books like Anatole the Mouse to decorate furniture.
the_pants

VERY cool, but I get the feeling you would have to disassemble the item to minimize cuts and edges. Maybe there are a few tricks? I would also be curious how they treat it to keep the wallpaper from aging as most wallpaper does.
ryuthrowsstuff

My Great Grandmother was a big fan of this. Not sure if she did it herself, but a lot of her furniture was covered in wall paper with images from 1920′s magazines and product labels glued in at strategic points. Always looked really cool and it was plenty durable.
aem

not hard at all. I wallpapered a dresser a couple of months ago.
blueelm

Decoupage… and yeah it’s pretty easy (compared, say, to building the furniture) but requires attention to detail. Think of all those edges to seal.

And if you use a resin or varnish to seal it you also have to take that material into account and make sure not to get bubbles etc. Same as with varnishing or sealing anything though. I guess I mean just don’t think you can take some magic short-cut to finishing furniture just because you also glued some paper to it.

The only thing is that you might end up with a desk that looks like that!

*blech*
dculberson

Submit to the decoupage!
arkizzle / Moderator

Easy to do. Hard to do well.
Anonymous

I do this all the time, all my furniture is covered in not only wall paper, but wrapping paper, take out menus, comic books, maps…and a whole lot more.