Craft Fail

Most of the time, when I set out to make something, I end up with a product that I can use, quite often similar to what I set out to make.  Some things even turn out better than I would have thought - the purse I made last week with the sign vinyl for instance.  But I do make a few things that turn out so badly that I can't figure out what to do with them.  Projects that need to be *gasp* thrown away.  :-)

Contact paper makes a wonderful mask on many types of materials.  I designed a cute little tote, just large enough to hold an 8.5"x11" notebook, with a leafy pattern on the front.  I cut out my panels using the sign vinyl that I got out of the dumpster.  I drew a leafy pattern and cut it out of contact paper.  I carefully applied the contact paper mask and took my vinyl outside to spray paint a lovely shade of periwinkle.  I let it dry for 45 minutes, and brought it inside to peel the mask off and sew my adorable tote bag together.

• Problem 1:  Contact paper sticks to sign vinyl. Really well.  Too well.  The sticky residue was almost all left behind.


• Problem 2: Sticky residue is hard to remove.  Even with peanut butter and goo gone.  In fact, the paint scrubbed off easier than the sticky residue.


• Problem 3: The paint started to peel off of one of the panels. Not all three, just one.  I can't figure out why.


• Problem 4: Things started to stick to the sticky residue, making the panels dirty.

But there was a happy discovery: contact paper is easy to spray paint.  At $1 yard, contact paper is much cheaper than commercial of craft vinyl.  Add part of a $1.50 can of spray paint to achieve the color that you need, and it is still considerably cheaper, and much cuter.  The periwinkle leaves that I pulled off of the vinyl have held up nicely, aside from the fact that they have little sticky residue left.  I am working on another way to decorate my tote (with a new piece of vinyl) and considering the possibilities of spray painted contact paper.  So I guess it wasn't a total failure after all.  :-)