Crafts DIY and health blog: DIY (Nearly) Disaster and DIY crafts

Friday, January 23, 2015

DIY (Nearly) Disaster and DIY crafts

It’s past midnight but I feel so accomplished. Not only did I clean my house, prepare meals and take care of my children today but I also began my attempt at distressing furniture.

Pinterest had given me so many great ideas as well as different techniques to try that I really, really wanted to dive in head first. The colors. The paint. The washing. The sanding! Oh, be still my heart!

I knew it was harder than it looked though so I chose my first project to distress with great care. In other words, I tried to find something cheap in case I made an absolute wreck of it. I picked up a stool from a gentleman on OfferUp ($2) as well as a can of white house paint from him for free (yay me!) and, best of all, a palm sander! Though I didn’t use it on this project, I will be using it in the future. Oh, and the palm sander? Free too (insert huge smiley face here). I ran to to the Dollar Store today (DollarTree) and picked up some assorted paintbrushes, foam brushes and a tarp to lay out on the porch to paint over as I knew I was going to make an absolute mess of the whole thing.

Waiting until the one year old was in bed and soundly asleep before I could get started painting on it just about killed me, but at 7:30 I finally gathered everything up and headed out to the porch.

I didn’t even know where to begin. I’ve painted walls. In houses. Maybe finger paints when I was a kid. I am horrible at painting. I don’t have any artistic talent and anything that involves paint involves am artists eye. Right? But, giddy with excitement (and nervousness) I poured my paint into an old metal 9×13 I wasn’t going to be using anymore and added a bit of water to it.

Adding water was one technique of distressing that I had read about and seemed the easiest for me. I didn’t know exactly how much to add so I just poured it bit by bit until it “looked” right. I plunked my brush in (the largest one I had bought) and starting painting away. What a mess. Oh, what a mess! Too much water? Too big of a brush? Waited. Switched to a smaller one. Still a mess! Waited. Got a foam brush. Better. Not good. Waited. Poked it. Wiped off fingerprint with paper towel. Oooooooooh! Took paper towels to whole thing. Distressed edges with paper towels. Forced myself to stop. Stepped back. Looked. Much, much better! Concluded that tomorrow I will have to repaint the whole thing (and I am not adding water) and get the undistressed areas to not look so…distressed. If that works then I shall jaunt cheerily down to the local library and print out the image I am going to Mod Podge onto the top of the stool. I’m crossing my fingers because honestly that is the part I am most excited about.

Over all it was a great experience. Yes, I have paint on my hands tonight as I type this (it’s water based so it will wash off easily but truthfully I don’t want it to go away as it makes me feel so “artsy”) and back hurts from forcing myself into awkward positions and somehow my big toe is bleeding, but I feel amazing. I did something today that was huge and new and slightly scary and tomorrow I get to correct my mistakes and get it right. I hope.