Decoupage Vintage Dresser Knobs Makeover

4 Materials
$4
2 Hours
Easy

Sometimes it just takes a little dressing up of hardware to give a dresser a whole new look.

Here are the fabulous vintage knobs that I found. Sixteen for a whopping $3. I really couldn’t believe my luck.


I knew when I saw them that some wonderful person had donated them to the thrift store just for me to find them.


Thank you wonderful person… whoever you are.


They’re porcelain or ceramic and have a very nice weight to them.


The gold circle is lovely and I thought it would make a perfect outline for a floral.

Decoupaging knobs is not hard, but there are a lot of steps.


First you have to find a graphic that you love. Mine is this french floral design.


I printed out a bunch of them the size that I needed on a couple of sheets of ordinary copy paper.

Here’s a close up of the design. Isn’t it pretty?

Then I needed something circular that was just the perfect size so the floral would fit inside the gold circle.


No freehanding circles for me. Now that would pretty much be a disaster. lol.


After hunting around and coming up empty I found the perfect thing in my coin-heavy wallet. When the powers that be retired our $1 and $2 bills a few years ago and changed them into loonie and toonie coins they really weren’t thinking about us ladies and our purses.


But hey, for once I was happy about all this coinage because I discovered that a toonie was the perfect size. Who would’ve thought a $2 Canadian coin would save the day.

I did two sheets of circles to make sure I ended up with enough good ones after I cut them out.

Which wasn’t as easy as it sounds. At least not for me. lol.


I’m sure it would be a lot easier for you, but I must have cut out twice as many as I needed.

But that’s ok, because I ended up with sixteen perfectly good enough cut outs.


It’s actually better if they’re not perfectly perfect because it gives the decoupaged knobs a more hand done look.. which I prefer.


Perfection is highly over-rated and should be tossed to the wind.

To apply my floral graphics to the knobs I put a light coat of decoupage medium on the back of the paper only.


Make sure to go light with it, too much is not a good thing.


The graphic will just slide around on the knob and the paper could get way too wet and start tearing.

After placing my graphic, I smoothed it down with my hand inside a plastic sandwich bag.


For me this method just seems to work better than using my bare fingers.

Here’s a before and after when I was half way done.


When I was done all my knobs I let them dry thoroughly, and I didn’t apply any Mod Podge as a top coat.


It certainly wouldn’t hurt if you did, but because of the next step it really wasn’t necessary.

On a nice calm day I took them outside and gave them 4 light coats of a semi-gloss clear spray.

I let them dry for about 30 minutes between coats.


Because my knobs are porcelain or ceramic I didn’t worry about spraying the undersides.


I really just wanted to protect the graphics.

And here are my finished knobs.


To me they look like they’ve always been this way.


I’m using 14 for my two dressers, and the other two will be used somehow in the bedroom in the future.

My knobs came without screws so I found these at the hardware store.


It looks like the size reads 1 3/4″ long but they’re actually 1 1/4″. I had to put on my reading glasses for that one.


The size needed depends on the size of the holes and the depth of the drawers.

And here are my decoupaged knobs on the smaller dresser in the master bedroom.


To me they look like they belong there.


When I turned the dressers into dressers with bookcases here, I left the holes from the knobs that came with them, so I was able to reuse those holes.


No drilling required. Yay! I love it when that happens.

And here are my decoupaged knobs on the larger dresser.


They go so beautifully with my antique porcelain floral floor lamp.


Thanks to my floral decoupaged knobs my master bedroom dressers are naked no more. Yay!


If you enjoyed this project you can find more decoupage projects on my blog here.

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  • Carmela Carmela on Feb 06, 2021

    The knobs are beautiful and I'm in love with that floor lamp!

  • Verla Verla on Feb 07, 2022

    So pretty! Can you link where you found the printable flowers?

  • Shi49046492 Shi49046492 on Mar 28, 2023

    Just wanted to say I love your projects! I’ve been wanting to redo my dressers and this is a great idea!

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