Before and After: Yellow Edition

Because I'm just now becoming an adult I don't have nice furniture. Well, my bed is pretty nice but other than that my apartment is furnished with laminate furniture from Target and barely put together items from Ikea. My natural instinct is to donate everything and just buy new stuff. My natural instinct is probably the reason I'm broke. Now that I'm trying to save/make more money my new natural instinct is to try to sell it on Craigslist. Unfortunately for most of what I own it'd probably be pointless. My dresser is poorly assembled and laminate and I could probably get MAYBE $30 for it which wouldn't really be enough to buy a nice/sturdy dresser. Even if I managed to find an old dresser that I could fix up I drive a Hyundai....how would I get it home? My boyfriend is thinking about trading his car in for a truck so maybe if that happens I can start purchasing bigger items but until then I'm on my own.

So the only solution was to take what I already owned and make it better on the cheap. Once again the solution is paint. Seriously, paint can fix anything.

Vase Before:

Not bad but incredibly boring and didn't mesh with the look that I'm going for in my apartment.

Vase After:

So pretty! While it's not much of a change the bright yellow (and dried flowers from my honey) actually looked like a put in effort to designing my living room. Plus, it was incredibly easy to do: Step 1 Clean dusty vase. Step 2 Spray paint vase and let dry. EASY.

Now on to my sad laminate dresser. Fun fact, if you ever want heartache and disappointment try to spray paint laminate. IT WILL ONLY END IN TEARS. Luckily, I learned that lesson on a small bookshelf/night stand thing (that I sort of fixed with layer upon layer of acrylic) so I knew to suck it up and hand paint my dresser. I wanted the shabby chic look without the shabby chic price (Shabby Chic dressers are listed at $300+ on Target.com!!!!) so I used this Crackle stuff from the Martha Stewart craft line. Basically, you coat whatever you want to paint in the crackle gel, you let it dry, and then you paint over it. The crackle gel cracks underneath the paint giving furniture an aged and vintage appearance.

Dresser Before:

Pic stolen from Target.com because I forgot to take a before and I'm far too lazy to do it now.

Dresser After:

Again, so pretty! I know it's not much but it has made all of the difference in my bedroom. I never really put much into design techniques but just by painting two items in my room it looks completely different and so much better.

Up close:

The crackle effect gives the laminate depth and the extra I spent on new knobs from Home Depot really paid off. I'm so freakin' in love with this new dresser and even though it won't last me for the rest of my life it's perfect for right now and cost me a total of $20 bucks to fix up.