DIRTY POURS AND CREATIVE MESSES

Here’s my giant GRAMMIE RANT of the day. Actually the last two days.

I have been painting an end table that I am converting to a nightstand. I painted it first with bonding primer so I didn’t have to sand it. That paint did wash off easily with water. So far, so good.

For the next step, I used a can of enamel whose cover assured the user that drying time would be an hour. Huh!!! Unless a body got some on her hands! Then it dried in three seconds flat! The instructions to wash it off with warm soap and water were a total crock! I kept making the water hotter and adding more soap. I got the scrubber from the sink and scrubbed until my hands and arms were raw! And that episode was just day one!

The look I was going for was a bright white, lacquered finish. I know now if I want that look, chuck the old end table instead of repurposing the dang thing! No way short of a miracle was I going to get the smooth surface I wanted.

My next brilliant solution was to do a dirty pour on it … which I did. Talk about a mess! At least I did this part of the project outside on the grass. And a little bit of the driveway and just a few dribbles and footprints on the sidewalk. Not bad. I need to power wash anyway.

Look up dirty pours online. If you have grandkids and want to do a painting project with them, let me assure you it is some kinda fun!

The basic technique of a dirty pour is adding different color layers of paint into the same glass. Turn the paint onto the surface and let it ooze over the wood or canvas in wild abandon, rotating it to seep evenly across the board. The designs this process makes are truly amazing! The covers of my books are dirty pours my grandkids made.

I used robin egg blue paint from the walls of the bedroom, some of the white enamel left from yesterday’s trialsome experiment, a dab of dark blue, a smidge of purple, and of course, what is a project without silver glitter paint? Boring, I tell you!

Part of the problem with today’s work was the lack of preplanning. I should have initially taken the small chest completely apart. There was one side I couldn’t get off without ruining the wood – actually fiberboard. Most of the rest came apart easily. The final product would have been more satisfactory if I had wrestled the fourth side panel from its corners.

The second mistake was not considering what would happen when I kept going into the house to mix up more paint. Let’s just say, if it doesn’t come off with warm soap and water, Ronald has some serious painting to do.

I dirty poured the two front doors to the piece. They are works of art! But one flowed horizontally, the other vertically. Maybe no one will notice. I’m sure not pointing that out to anyone!

The prettiest piece of the thing turned out to be the inside bottom to the cabinet and the back. I guess I’ll see it when I open the doors or turn it around for some weird reason. That will make me happy anyway.

The ugliest parts are a three-way tie, the legs, the vertical pieces that hold the side panel, and the side panel that I could not remove. For some reason, that panel reminds me of zombies or some horror movie. Just the way it drips, I guess.

I figured at the end of the day, I’d had a lot of fun. In the process, I did ruin several things. I gave up on using paper towel after I dropped a whole glass of paint on my britches. Both my pants and my shirt were work clothes anyway. I was able to salvage two pairs of sandals. Thankfully, I hadn’t tracked in all the paint that was on the bottom of the shoes. The apron I wore yesterday will be fine, just personalized.

I left the pieces outside all day to dry. I never get my dirty pour paints quite thin enough, so it takes much more than the ‘one hour drying time’ malarkey. The problem is, the paint droozled on the items I sat them on. When I went to retrieve the pieces, they were stuck to the cardboard boxes by the droozled paint. One even stuck to an old wooden table and when I yanked the panel free, along came parts of the table veneer.

Tomorrow’s project is trying to figure a way to get the cardboard detritus and wood splinters from the backs of the panels. If all else fails, garbage day is Thursday.

Blessings

        Kara Beth the Artiste (wanna be, anyway)

I guess my verse of the day has to be Colossians 3:23. “Whatsoever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord.” My project may not end up being what I intended, but I sure ‘nuf did it energetically with great enthusiasm!

I asked Ronald if he thought God will let me do projects in heaven even if I do make a mess. We couldn’t figure it out, but Ronald says he thinks God likes dirty pours. Just look at the evening sky!

Except He doesn’t make messes. Ever. Me included. I may be messy but in His eyes, but He definitely doesn’t see me as a mess.