Why spend a fortune in furniture stores when all you really need to give old furniture a stylish revamp is a glue gun and a bit of imagination?

There's something very satisfying about rescuing flea market furniture, or giving your own furniture a facelift. For starters, you're rejecting chain store conformity in favour of creating unique pieces that express your personality.

And when you're done, you can sit back and bask in the good karma that comes from helping to make the world a slightly less wasteful, profligate place. Here are a few simple tips and ideas to get you started.

Gilt-y pleasures
Auction houses are full of expensive antique mirrors and pictures with distressed, flaky gilt frames. This aged effect is easy to achieve at home with gilding liquid or wax, available at most art and craft shops.

Paint your existing mirror or picture frame (it works best on carved or ornamental frames) with the liquid and wait for it to dry. Then use a shoe polish brush to tone down the finish and sandpaper to create that worn, antique look.

Let there be light
Plain lampshades can be blank canvasses for creative expression. Measure and cut out a translucent coloured fabric covering and attach it with a glue gun, or stick on strips of wood grain paper. For a finishing touch, choose a ribbon of a matching colour and glue around the top and bottom rim of the lampshade.

Sticky business
Découpage is a craft technique that produces professional-looking results from very little effort on your part. If you know how to cut out pieces of paper and glue them onto surfaces you're half-way there already. All that's left is to choose what paper and what surfaces you're going to use.

Wrapping paper, magazine cuttings or pages from old comics make great decorative patterns. You can use the technique on coffee table-tops, glass bowls, boxes and vases. As long as the surfaces are smooth and regular, the possibilities are endless. I covered a side table with pages from a phone directory. See the step-by-step process.

Transferable skills
Lazertran transfer paper (www.lazertran.com) allows you to reproduce any image onto almost any surface, including wood, glass, metal, ceramics and even textiles. This leads to all sorts of creative possibilities. You could create instant art for your walls by applying your favourite images to canvas, make bespoke tiles, or produce a personalised set of coasters and placemats for your dining table (ask your builders merchants to cut out pieces of wood in the sizes and shapes you want).

Your choice of imagery is important here. The kind of retro advertising or old fashion photography that you find in vintage magazines can make particularly stylish prints, or why not use your own photographs for a more personal touch?

Patch it up
You'll be surprised how easily a few judiciously applied buttons, patches or pieces of fabric can give your cushions a facelift. Choose fabrics with colours that go well with the cushion covers, sew them in place with chunky, contrasting thread, or just use a glue gun if you're feeling really lazy.

Keep your colour palette limited and don't go overboard with how many bits and pieces you attach. As ever, with this type of exercise, less is definitely more.

Easy upholstery
Transform simple wooden cafe chairs with detachable seats (you can pick these up in any flea market) with a funky new seat covering. Charity shops and auction sites like eBay are good sources of fabulously retro fabrics. Take a look at this step-by-step guide. It couldn't be simpler.

Bedroom bling
Wallpaper doesn't just belong on walls, you can use it to transform the dowdiest wardrobe or chest of drawers into pieces that will bring a touch of glamour to any contemporary boudoir.

Remove any knobs or handles, give the front of your drawers or doors a light sanding and apply the wallpaper (you'll need to take the drawers out of the chest and cut out the paper accurately to give you a professional, continuous finish).

Paint the sides of the chest or the wardrobe in a colour that matches at least one of the shades in your wallpaper. For the most stylish results, use a wallpaper with bold, graphic patterns. Check out www.osborneandlittle.com and www.neishacrosland.com for inspiration.