Other Blogger's Craft Projects

It occurs to me I owe you an update on my sneak peak craft project.  I started two craft projects a couple of weeks ago, and kept forgetting to post about the completed projects, because I was already moving onto the next project (I know, there are 20 other unfinished projects I need to do....). Both projects were ideas from other bloggers that I have read. As I mentioned, following other blogs is great for ideas and inspiration. So is Pinterest... don't get me started on Pinterest. I could (and do) lose hours of my life browsing the great creativity out there. But I digress. Back to the crafty projects.

One of my favorite blogs is the Hunted Interior. Kristin was the inspiration for both of these projects. Kristin has a pink tray she painted, and I have always loved the pop of pink it had. Plus, you can probably tell my living room color scheme is shifting to include magenta, right?!  So here is where the inspiration began.

I loved the pink tray and the spiky little gold fellow on top and when Kristin posted about how she made the urchin, I thought, "I can do that." And I am a huge fan of lacquered trays. I have one from West Elm that I keep on my coffee table, and it literally saves my sanity (and table).  Unfortunately, West Elm does not carry them in pink. (Dude, why not?!) Then I remembered I had a sad reject tray somewhere in my basement and I started to hustle. 

It was just an old wooden tray that I had bought from Target years ago that at one point I attempted to be crafty and painted the interior of the tray with a sea-foam paint I'd had on hand. I knew very little about paint in those days.  Project Fail and to the garage sale pile it went.  I give you Exhibit A: 

I ran to the craft store to pick up some pink spray paint and came home with what I'll call "Hello, Kitty" pink (in actuality, it was Krylon's Watermelon).While I was there, I also picked up the other supplies for the sea urchin as well. 

Then I did everything wrong. I remembered to sand, and wiped the sanding dust off with a tack cloth. But then I committed the worst painting error ever: I failed to prime the surface. The tray sucked up the paint like a hoover machine.  Here is a shot with one coat of the Krylon Watermelon pink:

It was...very pink. It would have worked (maybe). But I definitely decided that the color needed to be more raspberry pink than "Hello, Kitty" pink. So I went back to the store and picked up a can of Valspar's Plumberry. Here's a quick snapshot of the cans side-by-side.

So after a few coats of Plumberry (and one unplanned coat due to the weather dusting some rain on the final drying coat...), I finished with Krylon's Lacquer spray.  And let me go on record and say "not a fan." I let the Lacquer coat dry for the recommended 24 hours before I styled it up. The other day, (a full week after finishing the tray) I placed a coffee cup on the tray for less than 5 minutes and it smudged the paint and left a ring on the top of the tray. Grrrrr. So I suggest you use poly instead of the Krylon Lacquer spray paint. Others have said they love it, but it did not work for me. Not sure if that's because it was layered over gloss spray paint or what, but it is not my friend. 

So here is the finished product: 

Do you see the second project on top of the stack of books? That is the sea urchin that I followed the tutorial from the original source Kristin cited, from the blog Craft and Couture. I basically followed the steps and tah-dah, sea urchin complete. 

Peyton made one too and spray-painted hers "Hello, Kitty" pink. Not sure I've ever seen a pink sea urchin, but it was kind of cute. What do you think--pink sea urchins are completely normal, right??