Make DIY Drawer Decals Using Wallpaper

*Today’s post was made possible by Fancy Walls, and features gifted product for the purposes of a candid review. All opinions are my own.

One of my many favorite things about wallpaper is that it’s really easy to use up every last bit so that there’s hardly any waste. The more I think about it, the possibilities seem practically endless for what to do with wallpaper scraps around your home. I’ve personally used it as drawer and shelf liners, DIY wall art, as patterned mats for frames, and even as a cover for a plain lamp shade just for fun. Today, I thought I’d show you how I recently used peel-and-stick wallpaper scraps to create my own DIY drawer decals.

The plan was to give this plain thrifted dresser in my home office a bit of pizazz using blush pink star-patterned wallpaper from Fancy Walls. I loved the retro look of the star shape, and thought that the soft dusty pink color would complement my blue/green painted walls nicely. I brainstormed all sorts of different shapes for the decals, but ultimately decided to put two oversized circles on opposite corners of the dresser with the decals broken across separate drawers to create a cool illusion effect. Here’s how I did it…

I first needed to decide on the size of my circle so I could find something around the house to trace on top of the wallpaper. Like I said, I wanted the circles to be a little oversized so that they spanned two drawers each. I looked around my office for something to trace, and discovered the the shade on my desk table lamp was the perfect size. I carefully unscrewed it from the lamp, set it down on top of the wallpaper, and then traced around the outside edge of the circle onto the wallpaper using a pencil. I did this twice so I was left with two traced circles, and then I cut the shapes out with scissors, making sure to cut just a little inside the line so you wouldn’t see any tracing marks.

I then slowly removed the backer paper from the underside of the cut wallpaper circles, and pressed those onto the closed drawer fronts where I wanted them, one on each opposite corner of the dresser. I had actually emptied all three of the drawers before starting this project, thinking that I would need to fully remove the drawers to get the decals in place, but I realized that it would be better to just press the decals right onto the drawers so that my circles would be nice and even. Moral of the story: don’t waste time emptying your drawers, like I did! The last step is it use a brand new fresh razor blade to trim off the sides, tops, and bottoms of the wallpaper to make them match the edges of the drawers. Note that the sharper your blade, the cleaner your cuts will be. I always use a brand new blade when doing any wallpapering job.

The final look is even better than I was imagining, and the whole process took maybe 20 minutes from start to finish. I love that these decals add color and pattern to my, otherwise, sort of boring dresser, but that the peel-and-stick wallpaper is entirely removable for when I inevitably get sick of the added elements. What do you think? Could you picture yourself trying this wallpaper hack? Let me know in the comments which pattern from Fancy Walls you would use for your own dresser, and don’t forget that I just launched my own collection with the brand, which you can see and shop here!

P.S. Have you signed up for the biweekly DGD newsletter yet? This week’s edition of Home Matters includes an exclusive discount code to use in the DGD Pottery Etsy shop! Check it out here.