The Good, The Bad and The Downright Ugly

I have so many DIY project ideas swirling around in my head!

But you know the thing about DIY ideas??

You actually have to try them to see if they’ll work.

You have to buy the materials

and spend the time to make the thing or do the project

before you’ll know

whether or not your plan is going to come together.

I’ve done some projects lately

that were huge successes —

I love the way this table lamp turned out

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You can get all the details about how I made it HERE

And this bread board is one of my favorites

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Read HERE about how easy this was to make

These floating box shelves came out great

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Check out how to make them HERE

But there have been some bumps in the road

along the DIY project highway…

I think it all started with Loren’s duvet cover

Remember this???

What started out as a great idea ended up looking like ruching on steroids!

You can read the post about this Ruching Gone Wild HERE

Then I had the brilliant idea to take it all apart and make a Kantha-stitched quilt.

What I didn’t show you was that I spent 2 weekends crawling around on the living room floor, hand stitching rows and rows with embroidery thread

while the dog kept eyeing me and sighing because I blocked her out of there with chairs so she couldn’t walk all over it.

Then about 11 hours and 19 rows in, I realized it was looking like someone gave a nearsighted monkey a needle and thread and said ‘sew this’

so I gave up and ripped it all out, washed it to get rid of all the needle holes, put the fill back in it and put it back on her bed

and there it will stay.

Unless…

I get another brilliant idea!

Then there was the orange armoire that had been bugging me for a long time

that one I wrote about HERE.

But I didn’t show you everything I had done.

And then I did even more to it after I wrote about it the first time!

So here’s the whole story:

I took it from orange

to white over orange…

to this…

And then to this hot mess…

Hey, at least the orange was finally gone!

Ummmm…

But no.

So finally

We stripped everything off

Now when I say we stripped it — that means Mr. Redoux helped me get it back to where I started

Even though I was the one who did it all

With a ‘just let me do my thing’ attitude

And every time he walked by

He would roll his eyes

And shake his head…

He helped me

(I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — he is a good sport!)

And we were able to transform that huge mess of an armoire into this aged wood beauty.

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See the process HERE

I ended up being able to save the duvet cover and armoire

but there have been other projects that I haven’t even shown you

because they definitely could not be redeemed.

Like this preserved ivy topiary

This grapevine wreath debacle

And remember the classic vases???

You can read all about those HERE

So why am I telling you all this?

Why am I showing you my failures?

Well, partly because I can get discouraged when my ideas don’t work out

and it helps to laugh a little at my mistakes

And to tell you that creativity is a process

And not every idea is going to be successful

And…

Success is not built on success —

SUCCESS IS BUILT ON FAILURE

So don’t give up

And keep on trying

You’ll love it when your plan finally does come together!

Phil. 1:6