Glittersplosion table makeover

4 Comments read furniture, Projects

The friend who gave me the now orange chairs also gave me a table to makeover. The table was overall in decent shape, save for the top, which was flaking and peeling like a sunburn.

I decided I didn’t want to refinish the entire thing, just the top, and I was just recently inspired by a completely glittered concrete floor, so I decided to glitter this tabletop in a similar fashion. After sanding it down, taping it, and laying down the base coat, the first lesson I learned is that glitter doesn’t stick well to spraypaint. Even wet spraypaint. The second lesson I learned is that if you’re going to get large amounts of glitter to stick where it doesn’t want to stick via spray lacquer, you must first mist the glitter from above with several light coats, as if you spray too directly, the glitter will ball up and roll across the table in chunks. The third lesson, I already knew: glitter eats topcoat, so in order to have a non-bumpy, reflective top, instead of gritty, dull glitter, you have got to coat and recoat and recoat with lacquer. I determined that doing this via spraycan would take a year and a day, so I busted out the big guns: polyurethane in a can, and I still needed three thick coats before the surface was smooth and reflective, with each coat taking approximately 24 hours to cure as apparently it dries very differently on glitter than on wood–lesson four.

Lesson five: if the paint on the top was flaking, the other paint probably isn’t all that stable, either, and the tape you placed to protect it from red spraypaint and glitter will likely pull it straight off. @(#& Nothing a little more spraypaint can’t fix!

The photo doesn’t even begin to capture its glittery majesty. It’s primarily red sparkle but in direct sunlight, it flashes gold and purple. It’s going to live in my crafts room, dubbed Mellzah’s Sparklepalace of Glitter and Gore, and there it will serve as a stand for the monitor/xbox Jason got me for the room, as he knows how important it is to me to have movies/tv shows running in the background when I’m working on a project; it helps me to stay focused on the task at hand instead of wandering away after five minutes.

Setting the bar on new levels of shame.

1 Comment read Everything is Terrible

Yesterday, I felt worse than I have in years. I’m blaming something I ate; the unfortunate part is that all I had the day before were home-cooked meals, so if I got food poisoning, I did it to myself. I like the idea of food poisoning much better when I can cast the blame elsewhere. Then again, Jason ate everything I did and was fine, so…?

I don’t know about you, but when I feel cruddy, one of my go-to home remedies is to take a hot bath. Usually, I’ll try to keep my hair out of the water, but inevitably some will get wet and turn into an unattractive snarled curlfro. Then, I put on a well-loved pair of comfortable sweatpants, as evidenced by the paint stains and the hole in the crotch, turn off all the lights, and curl up under a blanket in front of the TV and moan. There is nothing wrong with this ritual, and I challenge you to tell me otherwise.

However, what I didn’t expect was that yesterday the mailman would bring all of the mail up to the front door, including a giant box of candy for a party I’m throwing in a few weeks. I had to go and get the door in order to stop the dog’s “Oh god! Stranger danger!” barking frenzy…so there I was. A complete wreck, with greasy hair up top and a tangled, curly, matted mess below, a tank top, a nasty chipped manicure, sweatpants stained with craft goo and a hole in an indecent area, skin pale, sweaty and clammy, reaching outside and sweeping my box full of candy into my dark hovel like some sort of candy troll. I’m sure that looked GREAT. You caught me, mailman. I’m mainlining cinnamon bears, and I’ve been going through withdrawals, so that is why I look like crap.