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Thursday, January 17, 2013

A Craft Filled Christmas

This past fall I discovered the wonderful world of Pinterest! It's so easy to get trapped for hours on a lazy Saturday afternoon finding dozens of beautiful outfits, fabulous recipes, fitness inspiration, home and holiday decoration idea's, and lots and lots of craft projects.

I love craft projects. Finding amazing things that I can make for holiday gifts thrills me! I decided to narrow it down to two projects to give as Christmas gifts. Tile coasters, and homemade vanilla extract. Both looked like pretty simple projects, and both were budget friendly projects. After a little research, my husband and I found that there are a million different types of vanilla beans to choose from. We chose to go with a high quality Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Bean, picked cute little 4 ounce bottles with cork tops, and voila!
The tile coasters started out as a very fun project. Choosing lovely pictures and patterns to make various sets of four was the best part for me. They were so beautiful I wanted to keep them all! I had made sets of four coasters for 22 people, and had them all done by Thanksgiving. After allowing them to dry in the dining room for 4 to 5 days, I stacked them up and stored them in my bedroom closet until it was time to wrap them. This is where it all fell apart!
Upon bringing all my lovely coasters out to be wrapped I found that they were all stuck together! I was completely devastated! How could this happen?! I followed the directions to a T! Frantically, I began researching if anyone else had encountered this issue. I found a few comments on craft blogs that vaguely stated this had happened to them too, but no matter how much I searched I could find no answer to why this happened, and I had to start over from scratch. 

After some text venting to a crafty friend of mine, she suggested that I switch to cork backing instead of the felt I used on the first round, and try baking them to help cure the decoupage. I also decided to try a different top coat sealer I found was suggested on several craft websites...high gloss, pour on glaze. Let me spare you the scary details and just say that out of the 6 sets I used the high gloss glaze on, only 2 sets survived...barely. My husband came home from work that evening to find his wife sitting on the couch with a cocktail glass in hand and a bottle of Captain Morgan's sitting on the table in front of her...I didn't drink the whole bottle, just a drink... or two! The kitchen was a wreck and I seriously thought I was going to wake up the next morning with my hands glued together. I am not cut out for work that involves industrial strength chemicals! 

Luckily my husband came to my rescue and found a spray on glaze that seemed to be more durable than the original acrylic spray on glaze I used with the first batch. With a trip in the oven for a quick bake, and a 5 day stretch spread out across my living room and dining room under a fan, they were ready to be wrapped, and put under the tree with only a few days to spare before Christmas.
Next year I think I will stick with a project that is MUCH simpler!

Have you ever had a craft project go wrong?

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