~*~ TUTORIAL ~*~ Up-cycling shelves

Hello everyone!

Today's post is a mini tutorial on how to upcycle some shelves! The shelves in question are the above - My Husband had two of these shelve sets in his office that he no longer required. (They are from Ikea if anyone is interested!) I wanted some shelves for our bedroom and these were the perfect size but the wrong colour! So I decided to try and cover them.

The shelves are made of metal, and metal paint is ridiculous expensive, and due to the weather recently I didn't think it'd have time to dry properly before it started raining again. After some thought I'd try covering them with fablon (It's a sticky back plastic type material) and fabric.

You will need:

~ Fablon in your desired colour (NOTE: FABLON DOES NOT STICK TO METAL WELL, YOU WILL NEED TO HAVE ENOUGH OF THE PRODUCT TO OVERLAP ITSELF IN ORDER FOR IT TO STICK PROPERLY!!!!! If your shelves are wood or plastic you should be fine.)
~ Material (I used a patterned cotton, make sure you have enough to overlap the edges and cover all the shelves, and make sure it's not creased!)
~ Spray glue
~ Sissors
~ Cleaning cloth/spray/cleaning wipes

• Firstly give your shelves a good clean, fablon won't stick to the item if it's covered in dust! Make sure it's fully dry before you start sticking.
• Measure around the sides/where you want to cover with the fablon, leave enough to overlap, especially if you are covering metal. (Fablon has a handy measuring system on the back)
• Peel off the backing and stick the fablon, centered on the front of the surface.
• Cut any bends or parts you need to uncovered before folding!
• Carefully wrap the sides around and rub firmly over the surface once happy with the placement to ensure that it sticks. 
• Repeat until you have covered the parts you want with the fablon.
• Now the fun part! Drape your fabric over the shelve, you should leave enough over lap to cover the sides and to fold under the shelf to stick down. Cut the fabic the fabric to size. If you have a shelve like mine you will need to cut a small square into each corner to allow for fabric to fit around the sides.
• Spray your shelf with glue, make sure you get the front, sides and the outer underside too!
• Place your fabric on the shelve and smooth it out, the glue should be pretty tacky so it will stick pretty quickly.
• Fold over the sides and front and stick underneath, make sure it's smooth as you go.
• Repeat for the remaining shelves.

And there you go! Fancy new shelves! The great thing about doing it this way is that you can pretty much do any colour imaginable and it's super easy to change too. You can also match other things in the room to the fabric too, I've recovered the dressing table stool in it.

The next post will either be a sewing tutorial or a review!

Ta-ta for now!

x