Hack it to me!

IKEA Hacks... have you heard about them?  Check out one of the many sites that is dedicated to taking an IKEA product and making it your own.  

Or another cool IKEA thing is the game: IKEA or Death.  You are presented a Swedish word and you have to choose whether it is for an IKEA product or the name of a death metal band.  My metal-loving husband was the one that introduced me to it and I think he wanted to brag about how well he did.  Until I wound up with 17/20 which was better than him.  Am I a closet metalhead?  Nope.  I just know my IKEA products!

On to my hack...

Peaches and I were spending a Saturday at IKEA and shortly after entering, I noticed this bird cage thing.  Super cute, but it did NOT go with the decor in Peaches' room.  Black metal with a fluorescent yellow bird. But at $9.99, I had to buy it... it was practically free! (I can't tell you how many pieces of furniture from IKEA that I've purchased using that same mentality).

Love the names of IKEA's products - I'm kind of glad Sam too!

 

Now that's one yellow bird

The first thing I did was set up a little spray-paint booth (fancy for putting a cardboard box beneath and behind it), and I sprayed away.  It took three different "sessions" because I couldn't get all the angles without spraying myself or the entire garage.  I also didn't worry about spraying the bird since I would be covering it with paper. 

 

 

I didn't choose any special paint - just one that I had on hand

I didn't have any vintage scrapbook paper that I really liked, so I searched Google for Vintage Floral Wallpaper and found this.  I printed it out on cardstock I meant to print it out on cardstock since it's easier to manipulate with Mod Podge and doesn't tear as easily; regular copy paper works fine but isn't as durable.

I laid the birdcage flat and traced around the bird using a mechanical pencil.  I did one on the front of the paper and one on the back so that I would have a mirrored pair.

Next, I carefully cut out the "bird" using small scissors and took out the good 'ol Mod Podge

I used "Gloss" because it's what I had open in my craft room

I took a paintbrush and painted Mod Podge on the side of the bird that wasn't attached to the cage because I like to tackle the easy things first.  Then I tackled the other side... the one with the frigging hardware attaching it to the cage.  I tried to get cute and creative and take it off.  No such luck.  You can knock over an IKEA bookcase by breathing on it, but they're not kidding when it comes to metal.

Alas, I decided to cut a slit in the bird (and I call myself a vegetarian), so that I could slide the bird around the hardware after making sure there was enough Mod Podge to stick. Luckily, it worked and you can't even tell there was a slit in the first place!  

Then I waited for it to dry and placed another coat on top of the paper which may or may not have caused it to tear.  I'll never tell.

Almost complete!

Finally, when testing out how the bird slides up and down, it scratched the paint and gave me the inspiration to take some sandpaper all over the birdcage and give it a vintage bird cage look.


Hack... COMPLETE!