Lisa Frank Furniture Flip • A Dream 40 Years in the Making

Oct 6

3 min read

Updated: 20 hours ago

The finished Lisa Frank secretary standing open in a navy room, its entire interior and drop-front covered in colorful stickers, with a blue lamp on top

Some kids wanted a pony. I wanted to cover something — anything — completely in Lisa Frank. And not something small. I wanted it to be big. A major piece of furniture. Go big or go home, that's the only way to do a Lisa Frank furniture flip!

I was about seven when the obsession took hold: the tigers, the orcas, the pandas riding rainbows, that specific brand of neon that looks like a unicorn sneezed on a Trapper Keeper. I loved it then. I love it now. Forty years later, I finally did the thing. Meet the secretary.

A Dream Since I Was Seven

The plain brown wooden secretary before its makeover, drop-front open to show the cubbies, sitting on a driveway

I was gifted a brown secretary — the fold-down kind with the little cubbies inside — and I knew immediately it was the one. It was made mostly of real wood, which turned out to be a bonus: real wood takes stain beautifully. Good bones, boring finish, and a big flat drop-front just begging to become a rainbow. Forty years is long enough to sit on a dream, even a gloriously ridiculous one.

The Unicorn SPiT Ombré

Before a single sticker went on, I sanded the whole thing down and gave the outside an ombré using Unicorn SPiT — their gel stain and glaze in one. I blended four colors top to bottom: Pixie Punk Pink into Molly Red Pepper into Phoenix Fire into Lemon Kiss. Hot pink melting into red into orange into yellow, like the secretary caught fire in the best possible way.

Unicorn SPiT is amazing to work with. The blending was an absolute dream, and those colors make my heart sing. And that ombré had a job to do: make sure that even when the secretary is closed, it's still doing something. No boring "off" mode.

Commercial break! Free planner stickers for the Squad. Get my stickers button, with a blue Madge’s Misfits monster

800+ Stickers, Two Weeks, that's a lisa frank furniture flip for you!

Then came the real labor of love. I sourced over 800 Lisa Frank stickers online and covered every inch of the inside — the drop-front, the cubbies, the drawers, all of it. Tigers next to orcas next to pandas next to that one cool bear in sunglasses. No blank space allowed.

I've got a long history with decoupage — believe it or not, this isn't even my largest specimen. I worked on it on and off for about two weeks. Decoupage is fussy and slow and gets absolutely everywhere, and I loved every minute. There's something specific that happens when you finally build the thing your seven-year-old self kept doodling in the margins — it doesn't feel like decorating. It feels like keeping a promise.

Defined By What I Love

Close-up of the Lisa Frank sticker collage inside the desk, with a tiger, a polar bear, orcas, and pandas in bright rainbow colors

Here's what I keep coming back to: this secretary is completely, unapologetically me. It's loud. It's a lot. It's forty years of "I'll get to that someday" made real.

But here's the twist. When we moved into the RV, it couldn't come with me. So it found a new job: it's now the homework station of a clever teenage gal who is living out loud — something I couldn't do at that age. Forty years later, my dream piece is helping someone else be exactly, loudly, colorfully herself. I can't think of a better ending.

The finished Lisa Frank desk styled as a workspace with a laptop, colored pens, and a glowing Taylor Swift lamp

You don't have to grow out of what you love. Sometimes you grow all the way back into it — 800 stickers at a time. And if there's a ridiculous, glittery, technicolor dream you've been carrying since you were a kid, consider this your sign. The secretary says so.