DIY Re-purposed Drawers Turned Monthly Picture Displays

Good morning friends!!

I'm going to be sharing several of the DIY projects I did for Baby M's first birthday party!

If you haven't had a chance to check out the whole party, I'd love for you to swing over here and see all the fun!!

Sometimes some of the best projects happen completely by accident. 

And that was definitely the case for these guys. 

Can you believe this was the end result?!? 

It all started when the hubs snatched up this cute little dresser from a friend of his: 

It was in pretty good shape but when we got it home we realized it was the exact. perfect. size. for a project we've been wanting to do forevvvver.

And by perfect, I mean I might have jumped up and down a little when I measured it all. 

I can't tell you a lot more about it than that because that's a whole reveal in itself but because of the plans we had for it, those top drawers became cast-offs. 

See? 

So we had two orangey, wood-toned, lonely drawers that I literally went and sat by the trash cans to go out with friday trash. 

Then the next day, I was getting the itch to paint something...but not take on a huge project.

Am I the only one that sometimes just needs a quick-fix project? 

So as I was walking past the drawers, an idea hit and I just figured it didn't hurt to try. 

I was all set for them to not turn out so fabulous, thus the fact that I didn't even snap a true 'before' picture of them.

I'm pretty sure you can picture some boring old drawers though :) 

I sanded them down, took all the hardware off of them, tracks included, and grabbed a can of aqua spraypaint.

When in doubt, go aqua. 

At least it's the go-to in my house. 

And, well, the pay-off was pretty fabulous. 

After painting them with several light colors, 

I took my orbital sander and sanded the heck out of them.

I wanted a very distressed look- I'm a sucker for exposed wood & sometimes it's too much in a piece of furniture but with pieces like these that are small and probably only be out certain times, the look was perfect. 

At this point, I still had no idea what I wanted to do with them.

I thought they'd make cute shelves but we have no wall space at the moment to put them. 

Then inspiration hit me for Baby M's birthday party!

I had been trying to come up with a cute way to display all her monthly photos we took and these drawers were the perfect canvas to display them on. 

I was going for a vintage chic look for her party and immediately knew that the drawers needed some amazing hardware.

I dug through my stash and found these gorgeous knobs that I only had a few of. 

I love the look of mis-matched knobs :) 

To make it perfect for hanging pictures, I put a dab of hot glue on either side of the drawer and hung some gorgeous gold & white sparkly ribbon from end to end. 

I opted for hot-gluing so I could easily take it off afterwards since I keep thinking I might need to do something else with them.

For a more permanent solution, drill small holes on the side of the drawers, thread your ribbon through and then knot to keep them in place. 

I used gold painted clothespins and some cute printable month tags to display the photos with. 

I'll be sharing the month tag prints very soon, promise!
After printing the month tags, I used a circle cutter to cut them out and then layered them on top of gold circles that I cut out with a larger circle punch. 

Don't they make the perfect picture displays?? 

I'm absolutely in love with the amount of color & vintage vibes they brought to the whole set- up!!

Six 4x6 pictures hung perfectly on each one which made the month by month pictures perfect for these! 

I love how versatile these little drawers can be- they'll be perfect for all kinds of things at parties, whether for displaying pictures or prints or even laying on their sides to serve utensils, napkins & plates in!! 

I'm still thinking about possibly hanging them as cute shelves somewhere too. We shall see. 

What do you think of these cute, almost didn't happen, drawers? 

I always tell hubby that it pays to keep things around, even when you don't know what to do with them!!
I'm sure glad I thought of something before they hit the trash :) 

**Be sure to check out more of the party details here**

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