My Very Own Pinterest Fail, Halloween-Style!

I've heard the stories of Pinterest fails… crumbled cookie dough cups, frizzed out attempted 'beach waves,' my-3-year-old-painted-stars-on-my-nails nails, and everything in between. And let's be honest - some of the crap you see on Pinterest can't seriously be THAT easy, now can it? (Especially when it comes to nails.. because who could possibly think dotting teeny globs of different colored nail polish onto a micro pinkie nail is a job for a sane person? But I guess that confirms my insanity; I still attempt those damned cutesy dotty nails!)


Seriously? Yep.. that’s tooootally doable. In my hours and hours of spare time. That I totally have.


http://pinterest.com/pin/193373377720450905/

WHAT is this, and WHY is it labeled “super easy!” ???


http://pinterest.com/pin/143411569354101334/

I have made these several times. Looked. Nothing. Like. These. Ever.


http://pinterest.com/pin/180847741256955656/

But I digress… Now I have my very own Pin-fail to be proud of. And it’s Halloween-themed. All RIGHT!!

Last year I decided to forego the actual carving of pumpkins, and used an idea I found on a blog somewhere – it looked something like this:

http://pinterest.com/pin/174303448047618710/

It was so quick and simple - I glued black and silver sequin up and down the indents of the pumpkins. I even wrapped the stems in the sequin. They looked fabulous! If Pinterest were around back then, I would’ve posted the pics and bragged like hell. Too bad I don’t have a single friggin picture of THAT, because this year I have a well-documented case file of my failure. Don't worry, it really looked like the pic above!

I found these great pins featuring chevron-painted pumpkins:


http://pinterest.com/pin/32440059786771219/



http://pinterest.com/pin/32440059787352063/

Simply tape, paint, peel, and place on your porch for the Pinniest-happy porch on the block! I already had a few different paints in gray and white, as well as the cheapo-brushes. I picked up 12 dollars worth of pumpkins (yes, $12.. there may have been a slight human error in calculations at Wal Mart), and I was ready. Here we go…

I started with two pumpkins:

I measured the first one to see how long my chevron-ified tape chain needed to be.

Then I made chevron-ified tape chain using side of my craft table as a base. (I also tried another way to do this, by just making the chain right on the smaller pumpkin, but it went all cattywompus and the end didn't match up to the start. The side of the table kept everything in a straight line.)

 

Tape chain: complete! This took a bazillion minutes, people. A bazillion.

 

 

Then I applied the tape to the pumpkin. It takes some maneuvering to get it on there without a lot of overlap, since pumpkins are natural things, and aren't perfectly flat or rounded in the right spots.

Smooth down the edges so you get a nice seal, so your paint won't leak through. This wouldn't matter in the least bit later... ::sigh::

Two stripes done! At this point, I'm realizing carving the things would've been about done by now. And my belly was rumbling. Uh oh...

 

 

After HOURS of working on the taping, I was finally ready to paint. Well, actually I still had to wrap the stems at this point.

Finally! Paint on the damn pumpkin. This is just one coat. After two, it was looking pretty freaking sweet, and I was very proud of myself! But I was also starving, as I hadn't counted on 3 hours of time going by before I would get my butt off the garage floor... My hungry ass forgot to take a pic after I put on the second coat.

 

 

- - -

After eating dinner... I went back out to paint a second coat on the bigger of the pumpkins and peel the tape off of the smaller one. Wa hoo!! My hours of work were going to pay off!!

 

 

Annnnnnnd, there went 4 hours of work, down the tubes. Wow. I've had Pinterest hair, Pinterest wreaths, Pinterest recipes not really come out as planned... but never have I had literally hours of work, undone in 2 seconds flat.

 

 

 

And if you're wondering if I tried other methods to peel the tape off, the answer is yes. I peeled fast, I peeled slow. I peeled off of the dry pumpkin, and then tried peeling off of the still-wet one. Nada. The paint came off like, well, like latex paint, because that's what it was. Ugh.. Next time... I'll just spray paint and be done with it.

This is after scraping away the majority of the paint the next day after work. I got most of it, but they're still looking pretty sad, with flecks of white paint all over them like bird poop. I still have the splotchy failures sitting on the porch, where they will stay until I can figure out what I can do to salvage them.

Ever experience anything so sad? Please share your Pinterest fails and make me feel better!

 

By the way, while I was crying over my pumpkins wondering what other Pinterest failures were out there, I stumbled upon PinterestFail.com and EpicPinterestFail.com. I think I'm gonna submit my sob story. Go check them both out - there are some nawesome fails out there, and you can really learn a thing or two about which too-good-to-be-true Pins are lurking on the boards!