Furniture and decor decoupage: prep, motif, ageing, varnish

I decorate furniture and interior objects with decoupage and take the piece through the whole route: assessment, stripping, priming, the motif itself, ageing and the varnish that has to live with daily use. The first conversation is always about the object, not about the picture. A chest of drawers from the sixties, a kitchen tabletop, a tray, a wooden box and a metal canister all behave differently under water-based glue, and the honest answer is sometimes this — the surface has to come back to bare wood first, and only then be decorated. I remove old paint and varnish, fill chips and dents with wood filler, work up through the grits and lay a primer that seals the fibres and gives the motif an even colour to sit on. Ninety per cent of how the work will look in five years is decided at this stage, before a single sheet of paper touches the surface.

The motif goes on without wrinkles, and that is craft rather than luck. I work with three-layer napkins, rice paper and decoupage cards: I split the sheet, set it dry, feed the glue from the centre outwards with a flat brush or through a film, and float larger fragments on water. Edges are sanded away so that no step can be felt under a fingernail, and the background is painted by hand right up to the motif, so the printed sky or the printed linen continues into the object instead of ending in a rectangle. I use motifs from open sources and images in the public domain, and I draw part of them by hand; I do not transfer anyone else's protected artwork onto your furniture, and if you bring a reference we check where it comes from first.

Ageing is a decision, not a default. Patina in the panels and carving, a dry brush over the relief, one-step or two-step crackle, careful wear on the corners and edges where hands actually touch the piece — each technique is shown on a sample board and agreed before it appears on the object. Then comes the varnish, and here the purpose of the thing decides everything: a decorative box gets four to six thin coats, a tray or a tabletop gets ten to fourteen with sanding between them and a final matt, satin or gloss layer chosen for the room. Dining surfaces are finished with a water-resistant, hard-wearing varnish, and even that must not be scoured with abrasive powder or solvent, or left under a wet cloth. The timescale depends on size and on the number of coats: a small object takes about a week, a tabletop or a cabinet front up to a fortnight, because every coat needs honest drying time. I hand the piece over with care notes and say plainly when a design should not go onto a working surface at all.

What is included:
— assessment of the object, a sample board and an agreed finish;
— stripping, repair of chips, sanding and priming;
— motif application, hand-painted background and blending;
— patina, crackle and wear to the agreed degree;
— varnishing with intermediate sanding and care instructions;
— photographs of the stages and delivery within the agreed term.