almost, but not quite

waaaaayyy back when i competed in the 7th season of So You Think You’re Crafty, one week was “thrift”.

my entry was a thrifted picture i redid for my living room. i loved the way it turned out, even if it didn’t do so hot in the voting.

but man was that bad boy a struggle. (you can read more about it here). halfway through the project, i sort of switched gears—i had a back-up plan, which i began working on simultaneously—figuring whichever came out better would be my entry.

and for a while, i thought it was going to be my backup…until it all went bad in the end.

at one point in the process i felt like i had two huge piles of fail.

:(

the picture turned out in the end, so it was worth the struggle.

now, in the spirit of sharing, and doing my best version of “jenny from the block”, i present to you my version of “The Back-Up Plan.”

it began with an inspiration—a set of numbered canisters from target, perfect for the shelf in my kitchen. but easily copied (so i thought).

(target is no longer selling them but i found this photo on the www)

so off to the thrift shop we go…

three thrifted porceline porcalin porceline ceramic canisters.

$8 for all of them. not the best steal in the world, but still not bad. they looked like they were never used.

i washed them all and then gave them a few coats of white spray paint.

oohhh…so pretty. this is when i started getting really excited. it’s going to work!

i had ordered some vinyl numbers from my favorite supplier, wonderfully wordy.

and applied them to the dried canisters.

fail occurring in 3…2…1…

:(

the tacky sheet the vinyl numbers and letters were attached to peeled the spray paint right off the canisters—no matter how carefully or slowly i did it.

and there’s nothing i can do about it.

i can’t take the numbers back off. i can’t spray paint around them. i even tried brushing on some acrylic paint (you can see that on the #1 canister)

basically, they’re trash.

PROBABLY i should have lightly sanded the canisters before painting them.
PROBABLY i should have sprayed a primer on first.
PROBABLY i should have have taken my time and tested it out first.

PROBABLY that last one is most important.

(probably is starting to look weird and spelled wrong to me now)

but i can’t bring myself to part with them. the potential of how cute they could have been and almost were is stuck with me.

you see it, right? the potential? i almost like them better than my target inspiration ones.

so they’re sitting, neglected, on my mantel. pretending to be almost, but not quite what i wanted.