Project Fail

More often than not, people (who I typically have no idea they even know my blog exists...let alone read every post...hi random readers!!) approach me to let me know that they either 1) love My Yellow Umbrella, or 2) "don't know how I do all that I do," or 3) don't think they could do most of these projects.

So, just to reassure each of you that mistakes do indeed happen, I thought I'd share a project fail. You know...just to balance it all out.

We have a metal lap tray with Batman on it at my dad's house (lovingly referred to as the Batman tray). My stepmom has been in search of a second tray, so when she found a tray in her dad's basement, she thought she'd send it to Kansas City with me to work some magic on its vintage self.

I called her (in Wichita) from the Olathe Hobby Lobby and we dreamed up a new design for this baby. Baby blue with white snowflakes (she really loves snowflakes) and a second layer of silver glittery snowflakes for added dimension. I grabbed all of the necessary items and made my way home, picturing this amazingly sweet-looking and custom tray table for her.

I scrubbed it down to remove any rust and debris/dirt, painted it white, then gave the top a second coat of blue.
Then came the snowflakes. I'm not sure if the stencil/stencil adhesive I was using just wasn't high-quality enough or what, but this is where the whole thing went south. The blue goo IS the stencil...stuck to my baby blue paint. The pictures are truly worth a thousand words in this case. Do you see this?

Or this?

Or THIS??

It's official, I have no future in stenciling.

After cleaning the tray of the gooey mess from the stencil and sanding the extra paint from the snowflakes off, the tray went white all over again. This project is left unfinished for now...but please, never ask me to stencil something.