Pinterest Fail

My obsession right now is Pinterest.  I can spend hours and hours and hours wasting time scrolling through pictures upon pictures upon crafts upon crafts upon recipes upon a million different things that creative, crafty people have done and then posted on this amazing website.  Every once in a while I feel these creative juices flowing and I just want to create something, so yesterday I took on a project that looked fail proof. 

It would have been less frustrating for me to take a fifty dollar bill and tear it up into a million pieces, set it on fire, and flush it down the toilet.  Cheaper too, because the toilet wouldn't have charged any taxes. 

I started with this idea, to paint a chair with specialized fabric paint from a blog called Pinterest Addict.  So, this woman takes ideas from Pinterest and beyond and actually makes them work...successfully.  Look how fabulous this is...

...it looks amazing, doesn't it?  Well, we have a chair that is old and dirty and I thought "what a great weekend project this will be!!"  (seeing this picture now, I realize that I missed step one which is...buy the correct product...I used a different one that did not produce the same results.)

Here is my ugly old chair...

Here we are during the transformation process.  I would like to point out the blotchy colours even though I was careful to follow the directions, having a paintbrush handy to even out the paint.  Even though it's an aerosol, it's flow is not consistent enough to evenly distribute itself.    And this is two bottles worth of paint.  At $9.99 a pop, this was proving to be an expensive afternoon.



After another trip to Michael's to pick up 3 more bottles of spray paint, plus 24 hours left to dry...and this is how the project turned out.  If you notice, it is still blotchy.  It's hard.  It's sticky and there's a 6 inch by 18 inch *patch* at the back that is not yet done.  This is because I refuse to spend another $9.99 seeing as how I'm totally ditching this chair first chance I get.  

And if you look reeeeeeeealllllly close, you will see that a slug left a nice little surprise for us while I let it dry over night.  At least I hope it's a slug and not a gift from a bird's rear end.  Either way, it's rather poetic, wouldn't you say?

My tips for making this a successful project:

1.  Use the proper paint product.  I used the aerosol stencil paint, when I should have used the non-aerosol fabric paint.  I recommend following the directions and testing the product on a small piece of fabric beforehand.

2.  Pick a colour that is close to the colour you're starting with.  I went from light tan to black, which probably accounts for the blotchiness.  Unfortunately, the colour choices were like Green Apple and Poppy Red.  Black was as neutral as I could find. 

3.  The paint brush was super helpful for getting into all the little nooks and crannies of the chair.  The sponge brush was even better.

4.  Don't let it dry outside OR wrap it with plastic or something, so a bird doesn't decide to use it as a port-a-potty.

5.  Wear gloves and long pants.  I have paint all over my hands and feet and I cannot get it off for the life of me.  It's not that bad, but it looks like I haven't shaved in a week, which I wouldn't mind if I hadn't, but I did shave yesterday.  And now, I ain't gonna get no credit for it.

6.  Don't do it.  Take the $50.00 and go to a movie or out for dinner instead.  Wayyyy less stressful!

Have you done any Pinterest crafts?  Have they worked?  Share your ideas, share your tips, share your disasters!