DIY Indian Bone Inlay Drawers

  

| **Update: featured on the Cutting Edge Stencils blog here. Whoo! |

Indian bone inlay furniture is a thing of dreams for me. I drool over images online and when I visit a local store that has some pieces, I always find myself next to them in a daze, running my hands along the slightly irregular surface, turning over the price tag and .........HAVING MYSELF A HEART ATTACK.

The prices of these bad boys are significant. I can see where the value is in them as the amount of work that would go into the bone / shell inlay is enormous. If I bought one I am sure I would keep it forever, but at this stage of my life I was after the look but not the cost.

Here's a link to a whole section in Houzz with some awesome examples of bone inlay furniture.

I saw some images on Pinterest of some DIY projects using Cutting Edge Stencils and thought, that's it, I am doing it. The price was reasonable (postage was a little scary to Australia, around $25, but not too bad) so I bought it after drooling of some of the inspiration pictures. I already had 2 Ikea Rast drawers in the garage from 18 months ago that I hadn't done anything with so it was easily decided that they would be my canvas. 

The hardest part of all was deciding what base colour to paint the drawers. I was very attracted to cobalt or turquoise but thought that I might get sick of it quicker, so went with a neutral of grey, 

First step was putting together the Rast drawers (not including the handles) and priming the raw timber.

via Ikea.com.au

After priming, I put two coats of the grey base colour on and left to dry. Fast forward 3 - 4 weeks later (as my inspiration for painting temporarily left me), and I started stenciling.

The paint I used to stencil was an artists acrylic in white and off white that I mixed together.

When I purchased the stencils, I bought a three pack of stippling brushes from Cutting Edge Stencils also. I wasn't sure at that point whether I wanted to use the stippling brush or a small foam roller. Stippling gave a nice result, but it took quite a while so then I used the small foam rollers from Bunnings. Much quicker, but you had to be very careful to roll most of the paint off the roller before using it with the stencil otherwise the paint would bleed underneath.

Overall, the stenciling took about 3 hours, not counting the time between waiting for layers to dry. 

Next step, the knobs. I am super happy with them as originally I was looking at Anthropologie for knobs and those suckers are expensive if you are buying 12. I really liked these ones, but paying more for knobs than I did for the actual drawers was  bit silly. So, I hit ebay and found these for a ridiculous $1.97 each. $23 (including postage) in comparison to $96 (without postage on top). The knobs are great quality, the only complicated thing was that I had to put a washer behind the screw to make them fit the drawer properly.

All in all, I do quite like the effect. I am sure I could have taken much more time and had a much more precise result, but that's just not my style! I like how there are stronger and weaker areas of the stencilled areas, it mimics how the inlay furniture looks, it is never completely uniform.

I have placed these babies in the front doorway as a kind of console to hide little bits and pieces, in the future I can see them as bedside tables as the knobs match perfectly with my DIY bedhead.

Next project with these, stencilling a huge mirror of a friends, It's a little more tricky with all the angles of the timber, but I think it will turn out well now that I have all this stencilling practice!

Here is the mirror pre-stencil.

Stay tuned for the result . . . .