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DIMyFail: Adventures in Spray Paint 2
You remember the first failed spray paint issue, right? The one where my two cans of spray paint did not match? Well, I sent a very polite complaint in to the folks at Krylon, and was immediately taken care of with two brand new cans of matching spray paint. Great customer service, yo.
So I set out to finish my pretty jewelry display trays in matching colors. Well, the exact same color, really, which I guess could also be construed as matching. A couple more coats and all was golden, quite literally. Since I was doing this in the evening after work, I had taken advantage of the last remaining sunlight and left them out to dry overnight so as not to suffocate my family with paint fumes.
BAD IDEA.
Turns out, and this we already knew: DEER ARE JERKS.
What Robin Williams says is true. And this I now know because of this:
Crap.
That, my friends. That is where the deer hopped the OMG deer fence after eating my parents’ decorative backyard foliage and stepped his hoof right on through not one, but TWO of my trays. While I know, or at least think, that this was not a spiteful deer of vengeance and wrath, I can’t help but feel slightly as though this project was not fated to be. I mean, how many outside disasters must a project go to before a crafter decides “hm. This might not be fated to happen. Perhaps the devil is involved in my jewelry trays?”
Anyway, now I’m going to attempt to superglue them back together. I’m sure my next blog will occur once I’ve unglued myself from… most likely myself. I have a poor track record with superglue.
DIMyFail: Adventures in Spray Paint
I learned some lessons today, specifically involving spray paint. My right finger is telling you so right now, complaining due the extreme stress I placed upon it whilst spraying the paint.
I got some lovely stackable jewelry trays for displaying my wares at the craft fair I’m anxiously preparing for – but they were black, which is only my style when it is t-shirt material and on my torso. So after thinking through my booth plan in my head, I decided on gold – much more awesome, all of the time.
So I happily went out and got a can of spray paint in Gold, labelled “Outdoor Spaces: Indoor Style, Outdoor Durable,” which is also grammatically incorrect. And I sprayed. Here are the first two lessons:
1: Read the “substrate” listings on the cans, which is foo-foo-speak for “what you can spray it on and get good results.” Mine did NOT include plastic – which honestly, proved to be no problem but worried me enough that I stopped mid-project.
2: Gold does not go over black. I’m sure no other colors do as well. If you want to make it solidly another color, either buy like ten cans of spray paint and a forearm massage, or a can of primer. I went back to the hardware store and bought this:
See that big yellow banner? I should have looked for that the first time.
Which is a champion painting magician. GooooOOO primer! Truthfully, the whole reason I’m writing this post is for this sentence: When in doubt, primer it. It can’t hurt, and it can probably save you the two additional trips to the hardware store that I had to make.
So post-priming, I got down to bidness: I made them gooooollld, mostly… because of my pre-priming adventures, my can of paint ran out after 5/8 of the project. But those 5/8 were looking awesome. So… back to the hardware store I went, waving at all my new hardware store friends, confusing the paint department guys who I’m sure thought I was high on paint fumes which I was.
So I got my final can of spray paint back to the house and shook like there was no tomorrow so I could finish my soon-to-be beautiful gold and white display trays. The results!
What the crap.
Sooo… I’m sure you’re thinking that lesson #3 is “Make sure you pick out two cans of the same color of paint.” Which, yes, is a very good lesson to learn, but check it:
I am at least awesome at checking the label...
I checked the bottom, even, to see how vastly different the lot numbers were (if indeed that is what is on the bottom) – and they match too. So… crap. I did my best, and I have failed. Let’s take a look at this again:
Again... WTF?
It’s not quite so bad as the photo, as in the ones on the right don’t look completely white in real life, they are more like the difference between yellow gold and white gold jewelry. Which, well, I like both gold and white gold, but I was hoping for a little more continuity.
So tonight I’m going to write my very first letter to a company – I’ll let you know how it goes.
