Sewing Drawer Teacup Cupholder

I BET YOU WERE THE LAST ONE WITH A SLAP BRACELET WHEN THEY WERE POPULAR.
A lot of people have been into sewing machine drawers for awhile now and I know I'm a little late to the party, but better late than never right? I bought one drawer with the hope that I'll be able to find a matching one and a rack to put them in sometime in the future. This particular drawer was not a beauty when I first came upon it. It was slowly dying of suffocation from the ugliest shade of brown paint I've ever seen. I have a feeling the previous owner had never heard of wood stain and thought that they could brighten the wood of the sewing table by painting the whole thing a wood-color. I hope they were happy with the results because if I saw the whole antique table in this shade of brown, I'd puke a little.

Thus began my first stripping adventure using Motsenbocker's Liftoff which I saw recommended on Miss Mustard Seed's blog. It's a water-based stripper in gel form and can be purchased at Lowe's. I applied it thickly with a cheap paintbrush on the sides of the drawer right over the hideous brown paint. 15 minutes later I scraped it off with a paint scraper followed by a few hard wipes with a rag.

It took about 2-3 applications to finally get it all off. Quick suggestion, don't wait more than 15 minutes or the paint-gel combo gets sticky and starts to dry out. If you wait the recommended amount of time, it's sticky but in a wetter form and easier to take off. After the final application was scraped and wiped off, I waited for the wood to dry before taking 60-grit sandpaper and hand-sanding it down.

LOOKS PRETTY NICE. WHY DON'T WE JUST STOP THERE.
I actually liked how the naked wood looked, but figured the drawer would look a little classier with some wax. I had some dark brown Briwax on hand and used a clean cloth to rub it on the drawer. I used another cloth to lightly wipe it down afterwards to get rid of any excess. This is only the second time I've ever used it, but I really love how the wood looks afterwards. All polished up with that luster-look that everyone's always talking about and I didn't have to deal with a wood-stain!

It's pretty hot here in Houston so the wax melted a little. If this happens to yours, put it in the fridge for about 15 min and it should harden right up!

Right now I'm using the drawer to hold our tiny Chinese teacups. The cups and teapot aren't antique, but I think when they're this cute you can look past that! Here they are all lined up in a row...

But mid-way through this post I had a revelation and went back to take pictures of them stacked on top of each other. They don't stack well because of those little handles and I could probably use 4 more to make better use of the drawer, but look at this:

I don't ever say adorable, but this might be what it would look like if I acted the word out with props.

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