Postcards and Decoupage

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Not long after I bought my first house, I found an old desk at a thrift store. It looked like it had come out of a hotel guest room and was destined for some sad fate. It took only a moment to decide I would be that sad fate, pay ten dollars and cart it home. With my newly acquired secondhand desk loaded in the back of my Nissan Pathfinder, I was already planning its future as a much cooler piece of furniture.

My inspiration came from a burrito joint down the street, which not only had the best jerk chicken in town, but also my favorite tables. They were dark wood with random objects—keys, stickers, marbles—inlaid in an enormously thick layer of something smooth and wet-looking. I’d always admired the tables for being shiny and entertaining and because they looked like something anyone with a modicum of creativity and craftiness could make.

Full of confidence in my own craftiness, I headed home and added a layer of white primer to the desk. While it dried, I sorted through ten years’ worth of postcards that I had received from friends and family in exotic (and not so exotic) locations. I decoupaged my favorites to the top and only after it dried did I realize I’d run into a problem. What was that shiny, smooth stuff that sealed the tables? Was it resin or shellac? Was there a difference? Where do you buy either one? Could I get the same look with a hundred coats of decoupage glue?

At the end of the day I learned that, no, a hundred coats of decoupage glue did not give me the desk I’d dreamed of. Not even close. In its place, I had a bunch of artistically arranged postcards that stuck up off the desktop and were loaded with layers of sticky, clingy coating that everything from notebook paper to laptops stuck to.

Then—as is the case with many of my endeavors, crafty and otherwise—before I knew it, it was Monday and back to work and back to life, and the desk was stuck in a corner of the room and loaded with all those things people put on desks that make them utterly useless for their purpose.