Okay. Time for a confession: I am a pseudo-crafter.
Yeah, maybe that phrase does not exist (yet), but that’s what I’m calling it. I do not know always know what I’m doing, and probably shortcut a few things where I’m in a hurry. So my things are not perfect and would not hold up in a court of crafting gurus, but, gosh darn it, I don’t care. Or, more accurately, I do care, but lack the knowledge and patience needed to make things perfect every time.
Now, I’ve crafted things before. When I was a young child – maybe 7 years old – I did an art camp in the lovely suburb of New Orleans where I lived. For a week during summer, I made things that my 7-year-old-self thought were true works of art. I wrapped a ribbon around a small wreath and glued it in place. I painted ice cream cones on t-shirts. I painted wooden fruit things and glued them to hair clips – I distinctly remember a watermelon. I decorated at least one t-shirt clip (it was the 80’s – no judging!). So, you know, it was all quality art pieces.
Who remembers these little gems? I must have had 20 of them!
As a slightly older child and teenager, I expanded my pseudo-craft repertoire. I made oodles of paper-mache props for a club play. A friend and I to create a scale replica of Shakespeare’s Globe theater for a class project. I laminated quotes from ‘Macbeth’ and them in my own black cauldron of blood (FYI: corn syrup needs a great deal of food coloring for accurate effect) for what is most probably the most disturbing presentation my 10th grade English teacher has ever seen. My bedroom walls were decorated by my friends and a few jars of paint for things like hand prints, Monty Python quotes, and perhaps a MST3000 quote or two. And an attempt or two at very sarcastic IB Art (shout-out to the kids who do the IB Art classes overseas!). All very high quality, of course.
As an adult, I have done very little crafty things. I did repaint an old hutch for the dining room. And I learned how to do ribbon wreaths, which was fun until I realized I have nowhere to put all the wreaths I wanted to make. Besides, ribbon is pricey.
But this last week I’ve been particularly busy as a pseudo-crafter. My mom (who is actually crafty) sewed curtains for most of my house with the caveat that I would sew on the rings. In my limited wisdom, I was like, “yeah, of course I can sew on curtain rings, no problem”. I have never attempted such a thing. Let me tell you: holy guacamole, that stuff takes for-freaking-ever. I sewed on just shy of 100 rings, at approximately 15 minutes a ring because I am slow and pathetic at it. But it got done. And I only poked myself with a needle about 50 times – because a thimble would have been too responsible.
You probably should not use safety pins to mark where to sew the rings. But I did and it worked fine for me.
I also painted the crap out of things this past week. First, I decided an old pendulum clock from my parents would look much better in teal instead of plain wood. Then I got both kids plain-ole nightstands and painted them the color of their choice. I thought, “spray-paint will make those silly plain lamps look so much better”, and of course the kids want glitter spray paint, and it turns out there is a definite technique to using spray paint. Thanks, YouTube and Google!
If you ignore the crooked lamp shade, it is completely cute.
I’ve learned a few things:
- Painting is a patience-driven task. You have to sand the furniture before the first coat. Then you really ought to sand between each coat of paint, waiting for each new coat of paint to dry before sanding. And you’ll have to seal it with something, which means more painting and waiting and sanding, and that sealer will probably require at least two coats.
- As a side note, if you slather on too much paint in effort to go faster, it will flake off when you put the sealer on it. Even if you wait the appropriate 3 days for the paint to cure before you try to seal it, the paint will still flake. Thanks, pendulum clock, for that lesson!
- Spray paint smells awful. And glitter spray paint will get on your fingers no matter how carefully you use it. You know how glitter nail polish is a pain to remove? Same thing with glitter paint. It sticks to skin and is impossible to remove.
- Cardboard is gross. I don’t know what it is, but it always seems dirty.
- I do not know how to clean brushes properly. Between coats of paint, I’d leave the brushes in a Ziploc bag and they’d stay nice and pliable. Once done, I rinsed them thoroughly and lay them out to dry. The brushes are now hard as rocks. I’m not exactly what this means except that I have done something wrong and do not know the trick to it.
- It is easier to sew in daylight than it is at night using the ceiling lights.
- I am never sewing that many curtain rings again. From now on: pockets.
My dog is not interested in my attempts to be crafty. Not even a little bit.
I still have to-dos: slipcover some dining chairs, slipcover for a chaise, paint the chaise . . . maybe at the end of this I’ll graduate from pseudo-crafter to amateur-crafter. Wish me luck!
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