This was one of the very first pieces of furniture that I wanted for my home. Unfortunately, it was the last piece that I found. I love it, all $10 and ten thousand pounds of it, or at least that’s what it felt like having to haul it into the garage to paint it. But I do love it. It just took forever to come around. I seriously spent the first four years in my new house without a coffee table just waiting for this thing to come along. I guess you could say that I have unique taste, maybe even a bit eclectic, but I’m not one of those people who can just pop on over to IKEA and be done. Some say that I’m crazy, but I’m going to stick with unique.

Here is what happened next. I searched on Pinterest. That’s the crafter’s bible btw. I was looking for a stencil to put on the top of the table. Something fun and interesting. Something different. I finally found this one. I spent the next day and a half staring at it and trying to contemplate how in the world to get it out of my phone (itty bitty living space) and into the real world, life sized on the top of my table. I found the answer on Pinterest. I’m telling you, Pinterest knows everything. We are BFF’s.

Did you know that you can make a projector using a box and your phone? Neither did I. But Pinterest did. So there I was with my light box and this itty bitty image that I had traced from my phone onto a piece of transparency. I projected that image onto the wall where I had hung a piece of poster board (see the pic above) and voila! I know right?!? I was so surprised that it worked!

And here it is! The finished product at last! All I did was sand it a little and prime it. Then I spray painted the entire thing in the base colour before laying the stencil and spray painting the elephant over top. Be sure to cover all of the edges of the stencil to avoid overspray. I distressed the legs of the table a bit with some sandpaper to add some character and then rubbed a bit of glaze into the distressed areas. Add varathane and you’re done. I used the hard diamond finish in either a spray or brush on.

Not bad for $10. I am just happy to finally have a coffee table that was well worth the wait. 🙂