Soap Dispenser Re-Do: FAIL!

As a last minute addition to our crafting weekend, Mrs. A and I decided to try a simple project that involved painting soap dispensers with spray paint. The project was supposed to turn out like this:

































Instead it turned out like this:


We followed the directions, but obviously something went awry! Here are the steps we followed.

Step One: Remove stickers from soap dispensers. Mrs. A used SoftSoap and couldn't get the labels off so left them on. After all, it was a trial run. I used a soap container from the dollar store so didn't have any stickers on it.

Step Two: Spray prime the dispenser. The directions we used said to do the pump, too, so owe complied.

Step Three: Spray paint the dispenser a color of your choosing. We chose red because it's Christmas!

Step Four: Well...we didn't quite get this far. After priming and spraying the dispensers, we put them back together only to have half the paint flake off the pump. Mrs. A's idea of not removing the label didn't work so well either, as you could obviously tell it was still there. (Duh, right?) At this point she decided to abandon the project and I set mine aside for later.

Later, when I picked it back up, I noticed mine was also chipping on the sides and front. In an effort to jazz it up a bit and possibly salvage it, I painted a chalk board paint circle on the front. My circle painting skills leave a lot to be desired! I consider this project a bust, but would be willing to try it again in the future. And I promise to follow ALL the directions next time!

Lessons Learned:
- Spray primer needs to cover the ENTIRE project.
- Priming and painting the pump isn't necessary and will likely flake off.
- Dollar store soap dispensers don't hold the spray paint as well as the SoftSoap containers.
- Removing the labels is essential to an aesthetically pleasing project.
- Goo Gone would have been a great help to remove labels.

Wine Cork Reindeer- Success!

I was a little skeptical of this project at first, but Mrs. A brought it to the table and insisted it would be adorable. Being avid wine makers, Mr. and Mrs. A have an endless supply of wine corks. These, coupled with my mini cork collection supplied us with enough to make several of these Christmas ornaments. I'll give Mrs. A credit on this one, the project turned out adorable and was a great success!



Materials Needed:
- Wine corks (5 per ornament)
- Small red pom pom (for nose)
- Small black pom pom (for tail)
- Black jewelry stringing wire. We used 20 gauge copper wire.
- Christmas ribbon
- Googly eyes
- Safety pin (for putting antlers in)
- Glue gun
- Kitchen steak knife



Step One: Cut one cork in half, angling the cut. The full size cork will be used as the head and the half cork as the neck. Glue these corks together using a glue gun.


Step Two: Cut an angle on the cork you are using for the "body" and attach it to the neck with the glue gun. For smoother corks, you may want to score the two connection points to make the glue stick better.

Step Three: Attach "leg" corks. You may choose to angle the bottom of the neck, too, to make the front leg angled. At this point, all corks should make the shape of a reindeer. It took me a few minutes to get used to the idea that my reindeer only had one front and one back leg, but after I got used to it, I really liked it!

Step Four: Glue red pom pom on head cork for a nose and black pom pom on the back of the body cork for a tail. At this point, also glue the eyes onto the head.

Step Five: This is probably the hardest part. Cut the wire about 3 inches long and shape two of them into the shape of antlers. It took us a few tries to get it to look right but once you get it down, it's actually not that hard.

Step Six: Once the antlers are shaped, use a safety pin to poke holes where you want the antlers to go. Dig the antlers into the cork until they are secure.

Step Seven: Tie a ribbon around the reindeer neck to look like a scarf. I used wire strung ribbon, as it was easier to wrap around, but any ribbon will work.

Step Eight: Take a picture of your masterpiece and post it! If you want to use it as an ornament, hang some fishing line on it.

This project was really pretty easy! Despite my skeptisicm of Mrs. A's idea, I am really pleased with these! They will make great additions to the bottles of wine we plan to give for Christmas presents this year!

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!

Welcome!

After a weekend of crafting adventures, we are left with no other option than to document the trials, tribulations and important lessons we have learned in our newfound adventure as crafters. Stay tuned for details about what not to wear while crafting, how to turn a wire hanger into a gorgeous Christmas wreath and of course, a tutorial on the etiquette of spray paint.

Mini Pumpkins: Success!

When I first got the crafting bug around Halloween, I decided to try a project on my own. It looked cute and easy enough for a novice crafter such as myself. Without a need for any fancy crafting tools, I figured I could handle it.

Materials Needed:
- Minature pumpkin (I used three)
- Vampire fangs, any color
- Googly eyes. Large ones work best, but any size will work
- Glue dots or super glue to secure googly eyes
- Knife to carve pumpkin

Step One: Make slit in the "mouth" area of the pumpkin and start carving out a hole large enough to insert the vampire fangs. I found that I needed a much larger hole than I anticipated in order to get the fangs to go in. I also had to angle the hole from the inside to get the fangs to stick.

Step Two: Use the mouth hole to remove all the inside guts of the pumpkin. This is a little tricker than traditional pumpkin carving because the smaller pumpkins are harder and the hole is smaller.

Step Three: Insert vampire fangs in mouth hole. You will likely need to make a few tweaks to get them to stick. I didn't use anything to secure them, as once they were wedged in they stayed just fine.

Step Four: Use glue dots to secure googly eyes on.

Step Five: Take a picture and enjoy! If you want, add a battery operated tea light for a little extra pizazz.

Despite my somewhat jagged mouth holes, I was pretty pleased with the way these turned out. I had never used mini pumpkins before and although they were a bit harder to carve, it worked out well.