ANTHROPOLOGIE DUPE: Faux Handcarved Wooden Dresser | Extreme Furniture Transformation

Hello everyone, welcome to another Anthropology Hoax, today I'll show you how I recreated the beautiful Anthropology Hand Carved Ornithology Three Drawer Dresser using an old beat up

wooden

dresser

and some epoxy clay. This

dresser

sells for about fifteen hundred dollars and I was able to make mine for just under 100. The best part about this con is that you don't even need to be an experienced sculptor to do this project. Let me show you how the subject of this

transformation

is this

wooden

dresser I bought. outside of the Facebook marketplace, as you can see, I definitely have a lot of work ahead of me, so let's get started.

I started by sanding the old finish on the dresser using an orbital sander with a 100 grit sandpaper pad, the finish was already pretty worn down. It came off so it came off very easily. I removed the dust bag because it was in the way when I was sanding the top of the dresser. There was a pretty big stain on the top that took me a while to remove but I was able to. To remove it with minimal effort, this was the first time I used an orbital sander and it was so easy it made me want to refinish every wooden surface in my house.

I'm not sure if that was because the finishing on this dresser was already finished. So worn or not, if you have any experience using an orbital sander, let me know in the comments if it's always that easy. I removed the existing knobs and hardware from each drawer, then removed all three drawers and sanded the front edges of the dresser. I then sanded the front of each drawer, it already looks much better with the sanded antique finish below. I am using epoxy sculpture to add details to the front of the dresser that will give it a hand carved wood look.

I talked about epoxy sculpture in my last article. second hand video, but if you're not familiar, it's a two part epoxy clay that is super easy to work with, sticks to virtually any surface and dries hard, it's ideal for a piece of

furniture

like this because of its durability, it will They mix equal parts of a and b together and then you have a work time of one to three hours to sculpt. Be sure to always wear gloves when handling the epoxy sculpture. I really like these tight black latex ones. I'll link them in the description if you're curious.

I recommend it to you. mixing the clay in small batches and working in small sections so the clay doesn't dry out before you finish sculpting and be wasted. I started by applying the clay to one side of the dresser, smoothed the clay with water and then used my fingers and a sculpting tool to add a tree bark texture because the end goal is such an organic shape that there really is no wrong shape to do this. I use my fingers to add deeper lines and create a rough tree shape in the clay and then use my sculpting tool to add finer details of the tree bark.

Keeping your fingers and sculpting tools slightly damp will help keep the clay soft. Once I was happy with the texture, I added more clay to the bottom and repeated the process. The next step is to add the branches. I used a tree trunk-like technique and spread pieces of clay on the dresser and textured them with my sculpting tool. If you are sculpting over drawers like I do, be sure to cut the clay at the seam so your dresser drawers still open then I'm going to add some leaves using the silicone cake mold. Make sure to lightly wet the mold before pressing the clay so it doesn't stick, press a small piece of clay into the mold and voila, a perfect leaf, I repeated. this process with different sizes of leaves until the branches were full, oh okay, the next step is my favorite part of the sculpting process because it's so easy but so satisfying.

I bought a couple of bird-shaped soap molds and cut them in half with an Exacto knife. center seam After cutting the mold, you now have two silicone bird molds facing opposite directions, repeat the same process of moistening the molds and pressing the clam to eat it on the leaves. You can then place the birds in the desired positions on your dresser. I wanted my birds to look slightly different from each other, so I used a smaller mold for the body of this bird. I didn't really like the way the head turned out, so to fix this I simply used the other mold to create a new head.

Looking in the right direction, if your birds come out of the mold a little crooked, you can straighten them out with a sculpting tool like I'm doing here on the anthropology dresser. This last bird is facing backwards, so I use the same technique as before. Using a different mold for the head and body to achieve this look, I use my finger to mix the pieces and water to smooth the clay as needed, finally I rolled small pieces of clay to create the bird legs, I placed the rolled clay underneath of each one. The bird wrapped it over the tree branch and then split the end with my sculpting tool to create the toes.

Once I completed the sculpture and the epoxy sculpture was fully cured, it was time to paint. I went to the hardware store and bought a quart of paint. The closest color I could find that matches the dresser, this color is called palomino pony by valspar and I bought it in a satin finish. In retrospect, I could have bought one of those little three dollar paint samples and saved some money because the court was way more paint than it needed. I really wanted this to be as close to the original dresser as possible, so I decided to try painting the clay to match the wood.

However, I think it would be just as nice and much easier to paint the entire dresser. a solid color, so that's another option for you. I painted all the sculpted pieces being careful not to let the paint stain the real wood. This paint had really great coverage and only needed one coat, so after painting all the clay, I went over it with Once again, a thinned brown acrylic craft paint mix, being careful not to paint the actual wood, I applied this I mixed it over the base coat in sections and wiped off the excess with a rag before it dried.

I repeated this process until I was satisfied with the finish. do it, so if your brown paint mixture dries too dark, you can gently wipe it off with a damp rag like I'm doing here. As a final step, I applied a diluted yellow ocher acrylic in random places to add some warmth, finally I gave the entire piece a top coat of clear satin finish. This is my first time using one of these and I felt like this one was fine. If you have a wood sealer you really like, let me know in the comments so I can try it out. will be out next time, okay, before we show you the final product, let's take a look more at the before and here's the after.

I've been slowly working on this project for a while and I'm so happy to finally share it with you. Guys, I hope you like it as much as I do if you decide to make one for yourselves. I would love to see it. Send me photos on Instagram happyhomemama.diy. Thank you very much for watching. If you liked this video, give it a like and subscribe to my channel for more diys