You know that saying "third time's a charm?" Turns out it's lies, all lies.There's nothing worse then envisioning a project that should be as easy as catching a two year old picking his nose and then to have that project fail THREE TIMES. Okay, perhaps waterboarding may be worse. So let me fill you in. I've been wanting to add a little art work to the hallway that leads to our garage and I thought it would be really cool to make a longitude/latitude sign that represents our home, ya know 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The first attempt I thought I would be super awesome at frugality and use an old piece of wall art we had hiding away in one of our closets that was no longer my style.
Attempt # 1: For starters the art work needed to be covered with spray paint in the color that I wanted my wording to be in (my choice was Krylon's Khaki). Since I'm "with child" (I just find that saying hilarious......it makes me feel like a young girl back in the Baby Scoop Era who's going to be sent away to Aunt Millie's house aka confined to a maternity home) the hubby sacrificed his brain cells for me and took over the spray painting part. That was my first mistake. Apparently, he must of thought he was competing for some world record and basically unloaded a full can of spray paint on this project. There was no progression of graceful application of thin layers. He appeared to have an "all or nothing" mantra that day. I swear I could have scuba dived in the layer of spray paint he applied. IT WAS THAT THICK.
Things just got worse from there.........it took me pretty much all afternoon to get my Silhouette to cut my vinly letters properly {word of advice if you just received one of these machines, just throw out the instruction manual. Seriously, I have found trial and error has been the best way to get this machine to work for me and in the end my settings are never even close to what they recommend!}Fast forward through all the steps {applying the vinyl to the wall art, spray painting my top color, allowing to dry, etc....} to the end where I went to remove my vinyl, despite allowing the project to dry overnight {which may have been the problem} the paint was gummy as I was peeling up my letters which made the outline of the words look hideous. The whole thing was ruined. I admit it, I cried because well, that's what you do when you're "with child" and your hormones are on crack.
Attempt #2: The old wall art happen to come in a set so I still had another picture for round two. Things I did differently this time: gave my husband a spray paint lesson, didn't spend hours with the silhouette machine because I now know how to bootleg the thing to work for me, and I also removed the vinyl letters when the paint was dry to the touch instead of waiting till the next day. Dog nammit! It was ruined again! The paint had seeped under alot of the vinyl and alot of the letters in my words weren't legible AND AGAIN the paint was coming up gummy. BUT this time instead of crying I just drowned my sadness in a box of mac n' cheese.
Attempt #3: Now I know what you're thinking, "for the love of baby Jesus please give it up Jennifer!" But at this point I had convinced myself that it was the surface of the old art work {fiber board??} that was causing the icky paint problems. So I headed to Michael's & picked up a wooden plaque {so much for my free project!}
AND I started over.....again. I had the hubz spray paint it with my Krylon Khaki.
Cut out my vinyl words with my Silhouette machine. Used transfer paper to apply my letter & numbers to the wood sign
{Editor's note: I used scraps I had leftover so that is why my vinyl is 2 different colors}.
Covered the the wood and vinyl with white spray paint & allowed to dry.
Then came the time to remove the vinyl stickers.I was anticipating angels singing but instead I got a sad trambone.Despite my best efforts the paint seeped AGAIN under the vinyl letters and it was bad.I refused to trash a third project though!Thank goodness the distressed look is in. I mean for home decor not people.The look of distress on people is never good.So to make it appear as if this whole crappy project was on purpose I sanded the front of the sign to make it look weathered and then added some antiquing glaze to the top of it. I also dressed up the side of the wood sign with some blue paint to jazz it up a bit.
Sigh.....not bad but definately not the finale I had imagined.I would have liked the letters and numbers to be a lot crisper & cleaner.I think in the future I will stick with making vinyl stencils with my Silhouette machine and using those to make my words.Hindsight is always 20/20. 
Have any projects that were a total flop lately? PS. Incase you're like the Unabomber Jr. or something and are reading this, just so you know I photoshopped a few numbers on the longitude/latitude part of my pictures. So this isn't REALLY our TRUE location.......I believe this may lead you to the middle of the lion's den at Brookfield Zoo.Ya know, I just prefer to chow down my mac 'n cheese sans peeping toms & would-be kidnappers. Capice?
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