Friday, February 6, 2009

Two fun? projects...

Over the past week I did two projects. One that was a lot of fun and turned out well and the other that was well...if I was a swearing woman. The first project was a cake tasting for a wedding cake I am making in a few months. I made a marshmallow fondant and it turned out beautiful and if you want to see pictures click here to see them on my cake blog. As you can tell I am not a photographer by any means but below is a picture of a magnet board I've been working on (that was the second project).



This particular project seemed so easy at first. I decided I wanted to make one because I haven't found any place that sells them and the one I've seen for sale wasn't what I wanted or for a price I could afford. So I decided to make one. I scoured the internet for instructions and found many. I looked over them and decided that I could totally do it. So I roped my sister in law into making one too and we would build them together.


It all seemed to be going so well untill it came time to paint the frames. We really should have used spray paint but for some reason we chose another kind of paint. Well it was a cold day and we were having trouble with the paint. It wasn't drying. We used a blow drying to no avail and were flabbergasted that it wasn't drying. Well after looking more closely at the can we saw that it said that the paint wouldn't dry in very low temperatures. We had been painting in my garage (because we didn't want lots of fumes in the house). So after discovering our mistake we quickly brought the whole project inside and started praying that the paint would still dry.


Well it dryed but almost took two days! So we were very frustrated with the project already. Then it came time to glue the frame to the metal.


The internet instructions said to use liquid nails but they neglected to specify which type of liquid nails (yes I discovered that there are many different strengths and kinds). So after trying to glue the frame with (the wrong kind of) liquid nails my sister in law and I were at the end of our rope. It would not stick and finally we decided we had the wrong glue. So we researched what glue would work best and went to get it. Thankfully my sister in laws project started to work with the new glue, but because I had used the other glue on my project (even though I had tried to scrape the old glue off) mine would not stick. So I spent another two days rubbing and sanding trying to get the wrong glue off my project. Most of it I had to get off with my nails. At the end of this long process my hands were incredibly dry and almost bleeding from all of the washing and scraping of paint and glue. Even though my sister in laws project was finished and looked fantastic I almost felt no desire to finish my own magnet board.


Last night I finally just got fed up with looking at it and finished it. It looks pretty good I think, but I will never be able to look at it without getting a little angry.

2 comments:

The Hill family said...

I so totally wish I was there to make one with you! It looks so cute!

~*Jen*~ said...

I've been wanting to make one of those magnet boards, so I'll know what not to do now! ;) It does look really cute, so you did a good job, even through all the trials of getting it done!