Happy Earth Day friends! In honor of today, I thought I’d put together a quick roundup of my top 10 favorite upcycled projects I’ve done. Obviously my roots are in up cycling, recycling and renewing, since my blog started with only old furniture makeovers. But since I’ve done hundreds of those, I thought I’d offer a little variety today and show some of the smaller projects as well as a couple larger. Enjoy!
How to Make A Bottle Lamp
I took some old cider bottles that were buried on a friend’s property, cleaned them out and made them into bottle lamps. Full tutorial HERE.
Vintage Dresser Makeover with Floral Design
This dresser was pretty old, with a damaged and majorly marred finish with drawers that weren’t working well. I fixed the drawers and gave the whole thing a few fresh coats of paint, then drew and hand-painted a floral design on the front. See all the details on this makeover HERE.
Vintage Ladder Vertical Garden
I’ve had this old ladder I bought at a resale shot for years, but last year I turned it into a vertical garden to go alongside our front door. I used thin floral wire to attach the pots to the rungs and it turned out SO cute!
See the full tutorial on how I attached the pots to the rungs (with an animated GIF) HERE.
Vintage Door into a Sliding Barn Door
This old door I found on a Facebook swap site but it didn’t have quite the variation of texture that I wanted. Using a scraper, sandpaper, and a few colors of gray paint, I created the exact chippy, worn finish that I wanted, then attached the barn door hardware.
See the full tutorial HERE.
Kitchen Cabinet into a Child’s Desk
This old kitchen cabinet I found at Habitat for Humanity for $15. With a little creativity, I turned it into a portable kid’s desk for my daughter, complete with compartments to hold all her supplies, and opening storage to hold books/papers, etc.
See the full tutorial HERE.
Vintage Dresser into a Bathroom Vanity
This vintage dresser was in great shape and the perfect size to be customized into a double vanity! It did require some retro-fitting of a couple of the drawers to make room for the pipes, but with a new paint job and a durable waterproof top-coat, this vanity ended up being cheaper and A LOT more stylish than a brand-new vanity of the same size.
See the tutorial and the rest of the bathroom makeover HERE.
Coin Tray into Tiered Wooden Stand
This project was part of a blogger challenge where I was sent some random thrift store items and had to create something new with it. I was sent a wooden coin tray that I added some spindles to and gave a new weathered gray finish, to create a chic tiered wooden stand that is strikingly familiar to Pottery barn’s.
See the full tutorial HERE.
Leather Belt Planter Holder
I was completely inspired by an image I saw on Dwell, and created these leather planter holders from old belts. This was a pretty easy project once I had the right tools. And now that I have leather punch tools, I can create bracelets, belts, straps for purses and bags… lots of possibilities!
See the full tutorial HERE.
Puzzle Piece Map Wall Art
I wanted to create some map wall art for my boys’ room but wanted to add some visual texture rather than doing the typical map print. So I went to the thrift store and upcycled some old puzzles that were perhaps missing a piece of two, spray painted them, and arranged them on top of a template I created of a rough outline of the world. After I glued them down and added a frame, this large wall art was complete!
See the full tutorial HERE.
Brand Heart Wall Art
Our area saw lots of flooding this past winter, so I decided to make some wall art with it! By grabbing some dead branches and sticks, I arranged them into a heart shape and painted an dipped ombre design on them. After attaching them to a larger branch, this project become one of my most popular on Facebook.
See the full tutorial HERE.
Hope you enjoyed this little recap and feel inspired to reuse cast-off items to create something new and useful!
Enjoy the weekend!
xo, Rachel
Danielle says
LOVE all your projects, my very talented friend! x
Anne-Marie says
Great projects. You are very talented!
Cyndi Nylander says
LOVE LOVE LOVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!