Ahem.
None of these things happened. Magical Pinterest elves did not appear and make my messy house clean, nor did the sleepy-time fairies work their magic so that my toddler would go to sleep on time. He's been averaging about 11:30 pm after all of the holiday travel-party-playtime madness that has been our lives for the past two weeks. Since it's 10:22 now, and I finally broke down an hour ago and put in a video for him to watch, and he's still awake, I'm guessing 11:30 it will be again tonight.
Somehow, my mind sees everything as shiny and perfect - the absolute ideal of itself. People too. You can see where this would lead to problems, I'm sure. But part of my New Year's Resolution is to work on this flaw. So you can imagine how frustrating it was that my first Pinterest project of the year seemed to be blowing up in my face.
I'd chosen two projects, this idea to color a jar with glue and food coloring, combined with this project to create a Good Things of the Year jar. Sounded easy enough, right?
Here's my jar. I didn't feel like plunking down money for a jar that was just going to be used to hold paper, especially when I had one of these babies laying around. You know you have one - a dead candle jar that you don't want to throw away because it would be so perfect for SOMETHING.
With my highly technical system (also known as the really hot water, Dawn, and a butter knife method) I rid the jar of it's waxy contents and stickers, gave it a good scrub, and we were in business.
The first glue I tried was watery with little glue flecks in it. The second had dried out. The third was a charm - trusty old Tacky Glue. I followed the instructions and mixed it with water and blue food coloring and mixed. And mixed. What I got was a blob of glue on my brush swirling in a sea of blue water. I switched to the fork method, like whisking scrambled eggs. This was much more effective, and yielded a smooth, pretty robin's egg blue concoction.
Painting it on, another problem seemed to emerge. The mixture was going on in mad streaks, and my visions of a pretty blue jar were slipping away. Streaks and streaks and more streaks. It was a mess.
Nothing I did seemed to help the problem. I finally devised a drip method that seemed to work a little better. Do you see the giant glass of vodka in the picture to help me deal with the frustration?
Just kidding. Only water.
And somehow, through the frustration and agony, it morphed into this. Not perfect, but pretty, with just a few streaks. I still want to add a ribbon and a "Good Things 2014 label" but overall I'm pretty happy.
In the end, it was a fun project. And I've realized this year is going to have many challenges. Like hubby behind me listening to Ron White's absurdly raunchy stand-up show, and me trying to concentrate on being kind, and understanding, and not flipping out over small things. Because there will be small things aplenty, I know. Ah well, 2014, bring it on!
Jan 2nd update: It turned out! (Well, except for the lid, but being glue-based, it washed off).
Lo and behold, it turned out. I went with a red raffia ribbon because I like turquoise and red. I was going to do a big fancy bow, but went for a simpler look because a) I'm Christmas'd out and b) the cat likes raffia almost as much as I do. He's pretending not to be interested in this picture, but he's dying to slobber all over the stuff, I can tell.
Project #1: Success!
Total cost: Nothing! I had all of the necessary items on hand already.
Frustration level: Tolerable.
Repeat factor? Now that I know the end result, I'd do it again.
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