Knobs!

Yes - knobs! Who would have thought such a wholesome and pure young lady like myself would have got so excited about something like that?! And not just one either - but six beautiful, shiny knobs!!

Ha, ok enough of the innuendo! But I am excited!

Remember the chests of drawers I bought to make-over for our bedroom? Well I really wanted a lovely, vintagey country feel to them, and thought the way to achieve this would be with some pretty, old fashioned ceramic knobs. But after looking at the prices of the ones I liked, and weighing up that we need 18 altogether (or 24 if we decide to change the ones on the wardrobe to match!), it suddenly became a verrrrrrry pricey up-cycling project!!! Thankfully, creative inspiration struck and I came up with a way to imitate the look I wanted......as I do lol, using the original handles ;)

Pretty! So being the nice kinda gal I am, I thought I'd show you too :)

Start by gently prepping the knobs (am I gonna giggle every time I type that?!), with the finest grade wire wool you can get your mitts on, and then give them a few coats of primer. Make sure you let each coat dry thoroughly and wire wool in between each, it's a but time consuming but really worth the effort for a good finish - remember ceramic is really smooth and so we want our paint job to be as flawless as possible.

Once nicely primed, you can add the base colour to your knobs. I went for a crisp white, and I just used ordinary matt emulsion that I had handy. I used an artists paintbrush - I had a voice echoing through my head from the distant past saying "use the right sized brush for the job" and this worked nicely. I also found that by putting the screws from the knobs through  squares of cardboard made handling/painting them in one go much easier, and also left them free from sitting on (and sticking to!) a surface as they dried. I gave them a couple of coats, again giving them a gentle wipe with wire wool in between.

Now this is where the magic happens ;) I decided for that totally vintage cottage feel, I wanted floral details on my knobs, and that a decoupage-like approach would be the solution. So a quick look on flea-bay turned up thousands of pretty and cheap paper napkins, and I settled on these lovely pretty lil pansy designs. I had plenty of napkins in the pack to make every handle identical, but Mr T and I decided a collection of eclectic old knobs was the way forward for us! First step was to carefully snip out the pansies we liked.....

....and then using a tough glossy polyurethane varnish, carefully adhered the flowers to the centre. Once dry, I added further coats (leaving each to fully dry and harden before starting the next) until I had smooth and ultra glossy knobs, like these:

Here's how they look in situ on the finished bedside tables:

A little reminder of how the furniture looked before we started:

And how the two little ones look now:

Perfect for our cosy little bedroom, and the soft home-spun feel we want to create throughout our home. Now I just have the task of making a start on the large chest of drawers......wish me luck!

Thanks for stopping by, as always xxx