Decoupage IKEA table

I’ve had this project in mind for almost a year, ever since I went to The New Vintage Event in Brixton and saw Nova and Lorsten’s cute decoupage buttons and place mats. They told me about epoxy resin decoupage which is much harder wearing than using PVA. You can see their tutorials for both methods here.

I’ve already had some decoupage practice using the PVA method on a small wooden box I bought in a second hand shop. For the table I wanted to be able to put mugs and glasses down and not worry about damaging the surface so I bought some epoxy resin. We have a bog standard IKEA coffee table which is showing signs of wear and tear on top so was a prime candidate for an experiment.

I really like this old tube map wrapping paper (it’s the by the same people that make the butterfly paper I used for the wooden box). One sheet didn’t quite fit so we made a boarder using a couple more sheets torn up. My flatmate and I used PVA glue to stick it all down and to seal the top so the resin will sit on top rather than soak into the paper.

The resin comes in two solutions that have to be mixed well together then immediately poured over the surface. This is a two person job! We used the spatula to spread it to the edges, then using a pencil blow torch carefully heated any air bubbles until they popped, then left it to dry. It will take 2-3 days for something this large to set properly. It’s so shiny!

A few tips for anyone that wants to give this a try:

Whatever you mix the resin in is no good to use afterwards unless you have the right chemicals to clean it.

You should set up a dust sheet above and around if you can, we couldn’t and there are a few specks of dust in the finish.

Make sure you’ve thoroughly sealed the paper or, if it’s a wooden table the wood with PVA. There are a couple of patches that we obviously didn’t and they now appear darker than the rest.

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