DIY Fun and Colorful Cabinet Knobs

Heather McClelland
Jun 26, 2020
2 min read

Updated: Jul 23, 2023

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to make DIY cabinet or drawer knobs or drawer pulls by painting plain wooden ones, embellishing them with beads, and adding a coat of resin.

I love the look of old furniture that has been colorfully tweaked somehow. I love furniture embellishing (see my paper-tiled table and chair makeover tutorials).

How do you make decorative door knobs?

You can make decorative door knobs in a number of ways:

You can decorate an already existing door knob. Ones made of plain ceramic or wood are easy to paint.
You can make door knobs from scratch if you’re experienced at iron or woodworking.
Or you can turn an object of roughly the size needed into a simple door knob by attaching a screw to go through the door and using a nut to keep it in place.

And for creative uses for extra knobs, check out the 21 ideas on Apartment Therapy.

Plain wooden knobs - make sure you order flat ones
Tracing paper
Acrylic or craft paint
Seed beads
UV Resin or resin of your choice

Step 1

Choose a design to paint your knobs.

This took me forever, but I found some cool tile designs on Pinterest that I turned into circular patterns on my iPad using the Goodnotes app.

Step 2

Print your design and grab some tracing paper if you don't want to freehand your design. Use it to trace the pattern onto your plain wooden knob.

Step 3

Choose your colors.

I went a little overkill here. I took a pic of my knobs and colored them using the Pixelmator app to choose my colors. I outlined one knob in black to see how I liked it. I chose no outline.

Step 4:

Paint your knobs.

Step 5

Squeeze a line of glue around the edge of your knob.

I put some glue in a squeeze bottle to make a thinner line.

Step 6

Place seed beads on the glue to make a frame around your knob.

Let dry.

Step 7

Fill the middle with resin.

I had purchased some of that UV resin and thought I'd give it a try since the resin wouldn't be that thick - plus, I wanted to try it out. It worked great, and I used it again for these

sticker earrings.

Step 8

Cure your resin by putting it in the sun (it cures really fast, so don't go outside until it's fully applied.) Or...you can use a manicure UV light.

I also wanted to try out the manicure UV light. It also worked well, though I had to push start a few times as it only lights up for a minute.

Step 9

Paint the sides with resin a third at a time and cure.

Step 10

Marvel at the beautiful knobs you've made.

Step 11

Replace the old, boring knobs on your cabinet or another piece of furniture.

I had wanted to find a cute little used cabinet to add these to. But with all the goodwill stores closed due to COVID, I replaced the knobs on my old desk, which didn't look as wonderful.