silver leaf shelf project

my weekend project.

we've had the same boring lack shelves from ikea forever now. i think they've been in at least 3 houses with us at this point. (and have had at least that many coats of paint) since being in our current house, i've had a hard time deciding what to do with them. i painted the living room about a year ago and love the wall color, but was never happy with the shelves. so here's what i did last weekend to spruce them up a little!


i didn't take a picture of the first couple steps, so i'll explain where we're at here. the top and bottoms of the shelves are painted in the same color as the walls. the sides are painted in red.

after the coat of red paint, the little dude helped me silver leaf the sides. he had fun burnishing them with the rag. i made sure to not do a perfect job of covering everything as i thought it would be fun to have some red show through in cracks and edges.

after i silver leafed them, i antiqued them with a watered down coat of black india ink, that i then rubbed away until the desired depth was achieved!


here's a detail of one shelf. you can start to see where there's a little red peaking through in spots.


and here's a close up of the corner/edge where you can get the full effect of the finish.