Welcome to the June {ditto} DIY challenge!

Once a month ten very different bloggers are hosting this challenge to recreate in our own homes – and yours! – a project or design element inspired by a haute couture design. The idea is to inspire everyone to incorporate fine design elements into your own home in a way that fits your style. (For more details on what {ditto}DIY is all about, check out this post.)

The ten hosting bloggers include:

Darlene @ Fieldstone Hill Design
Ruth @ Living Well Spending Less
Cindy @ Skip to My Lou
Jen @ Balancing Beauty & Bedlam
Edie @ Life in Grace
Rachel @ Surviving the Stores
Karin @ Trophy Mom Diaries
Lauren @ I am THAT Lady
Kelly @ View Along The Way
Melissa @ The Inspired Room

This month’s theme is Go for the GOLD, and this was our inspiration photograph:

{Art and design by Samantha Reitmayer Sano of Style/Swoon.}

The {ditto} DIY Challenge:

Gild something, or paint it gold! Then use it in a lovely display.

This is where I’m supposed to tell you about how I did on my Ditto DIY project.

WELL. File this project under: “Just wasn’t meant to be.” I had big, golden plans to make this amazing striped box, with diagonal stripes! It was going to be awesome! You were going to love it! We were going to high five each other and celebrate! I had it allllll planned out.

But NOPE: I created a giant gilded box of failure.

I know you’re dying to know how to make your own failure box, aren’t you? It’s easy! Also, frustrating! I went to the craft store and got this unfinished wood box (about $5) and this Testor’s model enamel paint (I think it was $2?).

I’d planned to paint diagonal gold stripes inspired by these fab little cards I’d seen at the Target dollar spot:

So I disassembled the box so I could spray paint the whole shebang with a high-gloss white spray paint. Just used a teensy little screwdriver to take off the hinges and the little closure thingy, which I’d be replacing. (If you need any guidance on screwdrivers, make sure you check out Weston’s screwdriver tutorial, which is the cutest, least-helpful video tutorial ever.)

Then I used a little wood putty to fill the holes where the little hardware had been screwed in on the front, since I knew I’d be replacing it.

At this point, things were moving along nicely, and I had successfully not ruined anything. I had a blank canvas of a simple white box just ready to be decked out. But this is where things started to go wrong. This happened while I left the box outside for the spray paint to dry.

Turned out this would be very symbolic of the direction this entire project was headed.

With my little bird-poo pile cleaned off and the box re-sprayed, I took the box inside to tape off the stripes. Since I’d removed the hinges already, I taped the box closed and started taping off diagonal stripes on the lid. I taped the entire lid, then removed every other piece of tape so that my stripes were even. I did this on the sides too, but not the back, because what am I? Some kind of overachiever?


I poured a little Testor’s enamel paint on paper plate and used a tiny foam brush to start filling in the gold stripes. The first coat was very thin, but after the second and third coats, I started to fall in love with the mirrored metallic finish. SO FAB.


Isn’t that looking promising? Like you could just pull the painter’s tape right off and it will be amaaaazing?!

I removed the painter’s tape, and it was PERFECT!

Perfectly… bad. Andy and I stared at it a while in silence, while in my mind I willed it to be better than it was. It’s okay, I’ll just fix it, I thought. I was so young and naive then.

After the gold paint dried, I taped off the gold, sprayed some white paint into a cup, and brushed it over the stray gold parts.

But the spray paint smeared the gold, even though the gold had dried overnight. Some kind of chemical reaction of doom, I think. Ever the optimist, I decided this could still be salvaged. I’d just tape off ALL the gold, and spray paint the white again. Easy peasy, right?

This is starting to sound incredibly ridiculous. I give you that. But at the time, I thought just a smidge of perseverance would be the key.

Look at this! Just look! All my hopes and dreams were just waiting beneath the painter’s tape, ready to be revealed! All I had to do was carefully peel off the tape! Hope soared big and full in my heart!


Not ONLY did I now have white paint on the gold stripes, but the painter’s tape had ruined that liquid gold shiny finish I was digging.

At this point, we should all be able to agree that I should probably just give up on this project. I’d given it a good go, but any reasonable human can see when it’s time to cut your losses and move on to better things.

Right?

I am not a reasonable person. I pulled out the gold paint A-GAIN. And I tried to touch up the finish. A-GAIN. And I added a little charm to the front with hot glue, in hopes that it might distract the eye from the terror of the rest of the box.

It didn’t work.

I’d planned to use this box in our living room as a snazzy little place to hold our remotes, but ain’t no way I’m puttin’ that junk where it can be examined. Right now it’s hiding on our office bookshelf wall, trying to blend in with its surroundings.

Fortunately this only cost me $7 and a billion hours. *SIGHHHHH.* Ya win some, ya lose some. Happens to the best of us.* If it wasn’t for this Ditto DIY challenge, I would have hidden this box away and never let it be seen by a living soul. But I owed you a gold project for Ditto DIY, and I finished this last night, soooo… Procrastination strikes again. At least there’s always next month’s Ditto DIY challenge!

*It probably doesn’t happen to the best of us.

BUT GOOD NEWS! It’s time to link up your own fabulous Go for the GOLD projects and join the {ditto} DIY party! It wouldn’t be much of a party if you didn’t stick around, so be sure to check out all the other much-more-fabulous, much-less-failurey gold projects!

Then, it’s time to get ready for next month’s challenge, which we’ll all link up right here on July 1. Be sure to visit Darlene’s site for a peek at next month’s challenge along with some expert design tips on incorporating gold accents into your home. (HINT: This design challenge could very well use something that is just sitting in your closet, and turn it into gorgeous art work for your walls!)

I can’t wait to see how you killed it this month! Let’s see your projects!