Khloe's Toy Chest Recreation (March 2012)

I always love to create/ draw/ paint... you name it! My latest project was to refinish an old toy chest that I purchased through one of my FAVORITE Children's Boutiques (3 Monkeys). I purchased the toy chest from them when they were moving their store from Rogers to Fayetteville. They didn't have a use for the colors of the toy chest anymore. It is SOLID wood and very large... they just don't make toy chests like that anymore! So, I scooped it up from them for $100 and refinished/ recreated it for my daughter's bedroom (spending just over $100 more on paints and supplies!). :)

Here is the Toy Chest I purchased (it was turquoise blue, purple and yellow):


Look how little my daughter looks on her toy chest...



After my trips to Hobby Lobby and Lowe's, I was able to begin my fun project! I bought spray paints, acrylic paints, paint brushes, painters tape, brown paper, sponges, stencils and sand paper. :)

The first step of the process... I sanded and primed the main toy chest. Then I painted the whole chest the main color of the toy chest - very pale/light pink.

Step 1: Light sanding; primer; light pink paint on main body of toy chest...





Step 2: Brown Paper covering main body of toy chest (the light pink painted first); painters tape all around toy chest edges to prevent runs/leaks; hot pink paint painted as accent color on molding of toy chest...





The Inside of the Toy chest was also painted the hot pink accent color!!

(This took several coats and a few extra trips to Hobby Lobby to continue restocking paint...)

Step 3: Cut brown paper and tape off of straps and handles of toy chest/re tape edges on the straps and handles; Tape/cover all finished hot pink painted molding; Paint straps and handles of toy chest Sage Green....





Step 4: Remove all paper and tape on entire Toy Chest; Touch up any runs/smudged paint. (This required a matching of paint at Lowe's for both the main light pink color and the accent hot pink color. When I removed tape the green had ran under tape and gotten on light pink and hot pink. Just added another step to my process!)



As you can see I had to re tape around the straps and handles once the green dried. I had to take a tiny paint brush and a different acrylic paint to cover smudges and runs. It was time-consuming, but worth it! :)

Once the touch-up paint dried. I couldn't decide if I wanted to stop there and keep the colors light pink, hot pink and sage green (the colors of my daughter's nursery/bedroom) or if I should go on. Frankly, I was done with this project and thought about stopping there. It had already taken me 3 weeks up to this point, because one day it would be super windy outside... the next day freezing... and other days raining hard. BUT, I thought about it and figured that I had almost completed my original idea of how I wanted her toy chest to look... and darn it, I was going to make it perfect. (Her nursery is accented with giraffe print, so of course, it needed to be a perfect custom paint job to match her room perfectly! So, I went on.

I found an adorable giraffe print stencil that I used to paint a 6" border in the middle of the toy chest. I used an earth tone brown and a sponge to paint the giraffe print (to give it that animal hair appearance). It really didn't take me any time to complete the border! Maybe 20 minutes.

Step 4 - FINAL Step: Paint Giraffe Print Center Border with sponge/stencil and earth tone acrylic hand paint; Glue amber rhinestones to the center of the straps (on top of the toy chest); Glue Tulle Bow with pink rhinestone center to lid (creating that EXTRA girly look!); Add curlz font "K" initial to bottom right corner of toy chest front... nothing cuter than a little personalization (my daughter has her name and initial EVERYWHERE in her room!)!







VOILA... PROJECT COMPLETE!!! It turned out just darling... and exactly as I had envisioned! I knew I could make something gorgeous with this old fashioned solid wood toy chest that I found and bought! I saved a lot of money finishing this myself... Had I paid a professional artist to complete this it would have cost hundreds of dollars more and may not have been made with LOVE... like it was! :) I decided to take an old lamp and paint the shade the matching light pink in the toy chest and add some fur, rhinestones and bow to it to place beside her toy chest (which took me all of 15 minutes to accomplish!)





Khloe absolutely LOVES her new toy chest and it fit nicely in her room!

XOXO