Adventures with Spray Paint...

Being new to crafting, Mrs. A and I haven't had much experience working with spray paint or any of it's sister products, spray primer, spray adhesive or spray sealant. So when we decided to tackle a weekend of craft projects and couldn't find all our supplies in the right colors, we didn't think it was that big of a deal to pick up a can of spray paint and paint the supplies the right color. Boy were we wrong!

Four of the projects we decided to do involved us using spray paint or primer to get things the way we "needed" them. The items were: Christmas bulbs, a soap dispenser, buttons and branches. After some research on the joys of spray painting and a trip to our friendly Home Depot (HD for short), we picked up a can of spray primer and three different colors of spray paint. With dusk approaching, we headed out to the garage to begin stage one off our crafting weekend.

We knew that in order to get the paint to stick to most surfaces, we'd need to spray a coat of primer on first. So we set up a spraying station complete with garbage bags to protect the floor, and a hook to hang our projects on.

After the setup, we began by spray priming the Christmas bulbs. Holy crap, it took forever! Apparently with spray painting, less is more, and the smaller the coat you put on, the better it stays. We learned the hard way that too much spray means lots of drips and way too long to dry! After spending about an hour spraying about 20 Christmas bulbs, we moved on to some pink buttons that we wanted to turn white and our floral stems that were eventually to be silver. Lastly, we spray primed some hand soap containers trying to make them pretty. Please note that we followed all directions with these projects, but not all directions are very thorough!

After the priming, we moved on to painting. The Christmas bulbs were destined to become blue, as we weren't able to locate enough blue balls at the dollar store. So we cracked open our can of blue and started spraying. And spraying. And spraying. And spraying. Another hour later the balls finally looked somewhat blue. Unfortunately, as we looked around so did everything else. Apparently when they say "well ventilated" they mean REALLY well ventilated and opening the garage doors isn't quite enough. Bummer. Most alarming was when Mrs. A looked at my face and gasped, "You really DO have paint on your face!" Um. Yes.



I had paint on my face. Everywhere. And in my hair. And on my clothes. Everywhere! So, not to self, when they say "well ventilated" take it seriously!!

The rest of our spray painting adventure went "okay" as we learned to step back a bit from what we were spraying and not to breathe so heavily. Unfortunately, the drips and chips that came along with it were not expected. To summarize, here are the lessons learned.

1-Too much spray paint will drip!
2-Wearing a mask is recommended
3-Spray paint sticks to everything! Don't wear your new jeans or good sweatshirt while using it (oops).
4-Well ventilated means (say it with me) WELL VENTILATED!
5-garage doors do not meet the definition of well ventilated
6-Spray painting takes FOREVER!
7-If you want something a particular color, it's much easier to buy it that way than to paint it!
8-A coat of primer does not prevent something from chipping.
9-Plastic flowers are probably the easiest thing to paint.
10-Spray paint isn't as cheap as you think.

So that's it folks. Adventures in spray paint aren't as promising as they seem!