My Customised Ikea Alex!

The Ikea Alex. The answer to every beauty obsessive's storage problems. A standard fixture in almost every beauty blogger's bedroom. BUT... It's undeniably boring-looking. It's not ugly as such, just quite clinical and plain. I decided a couple of weeks ago that I was going to change this...

Say hello to my new and improved Alex, customised with my own fair hands!

I absolutely love the results. If you have an Alex at home and you're thinking of making it a little more 'fancy' looking, here's how I did it:

First of all I chose a paint colour. I used 'Duck Egg' blue from Laura Ashley's line at Homebase in an Eggshell finish. Next I used masking tape to mark out the stripes. I used the width of the tape to determine the size of the stripes, which was really easy, so if you want smaller stripes, I'd recommend using a different width of tape.

I applied a little strip of tape to every drawer to act as a spacer in between lines so I was sure they were all evenly spaced. I also worked from both sides in (as an even number of stripes didn't fit for the width of the unit) So there's a bigger stripe in the middle, ready for the knobs!

Next, I removed the spacer strips of making tape, and painted the sides and stripes with three coats of my Duck Egg Blue paint (waiting for each coat to dry before starting on the next)

After leaving it to completely dry overnight, I removed the masking tape.

Finally, I drilled holes in the centre of each drawer (measuring the centre carefully with a ruler and pencil!) and popped in mis-matching knobs from Zara home.

I chose these ceramic flower ones as they are fun and had a variety of colours, but they were also the most affordable from Zara's home collection (which, on a side note... is amazing!) They were £5.99 for a pack of 2.

What do you think? I'm totally in love with my Alex now, and I'll definitely be customising more of my Ikea furniture soon!

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