Wrapping Paper Lined Book Shelf

Last week I made serious progress on the play closet. I painted the book shelf and the table. I was loving the way it was all coming together and of course something caught my eye. I was minding my own business at Target and this beautiful white and green chevron printed wrapping paper practically jumped into my cart! Oddly enough the green is the exact same color as the table pre-paint. Maybe that was a sign???

So I decided to see how this might look lining the book shelf. I taped it up and snapped a picture on my phone. It looked nice and really how hard could this be? Worse case scenario, I wasted the $4 that the wrapping cost and I would have to repaint the back. Let's give it a try!

I measured the width and length of the largest shelf first and carefully cut the paper. I tried the paper to make sure that it fit and it did. Now for the real fun... I was thinking about just taping it up when I saw my bottle of Mod Podge. I immediately decided to use it and to put a nice layer over the paper too since it is for the kid's and that should help to protect it.

I started by applying Mod Podge to one side of the shelf back. I placed the paper so that it fit perfectly across the shelf back and pressed it down. I then lifted up the non glued down section and applied Mod Podge across the rest of the back. I then inch by inch smoothed the paper down. Logically, these steps should work right? Well, I did not take into account the fact that this paper is SUPER thin (that's what you get for $4). So I was left with small ripples and bubbles that I should be able to smooth out using a credit card or other flat surface but that made the paper start to tear.

Now what? Should I stop? Of course not! I'll just keep forging ahead and attempt it again for shelf 1 and 3. Surely, if I try again I can avoid this issue! But each shelf looked progressively worse! At this point I have dragged my hubby in to see how bad it looks and of course he tells me that it isn't as bad as it seems! I decide to let it dry overnight and maybe the magic elves living in the play closet will work their magic on it...

I slowly open the door to see what 10 hours of drying has left me with and it's not horrible.  From a distance... with toys and books on the book shelf! So this will be a temporary solution for me and I have this on to my rapidly expanding list of projects to be completed in the distant future.

Here are the before, during, and afters.... on the positive side Little Man still loves his play closet!