Yes, you read correctly, EPIC. FAIL. Our first Pinstrosity here at B&B, though I’m sure it won’t be the last.
It all started with the discovery of this old cotton rug in the basement. Unused, just waiting for a home. I had been planning to come up with some sort of small rug to go with the new pop of green in our bedroom and this rug was the perfect (and perfectly free) solution.
Then I remembered seeing a little painted rug tutorial on Pinterest…
Source: hueology.blogspot.com via Beth & Bill on Pinterest
So I decided to give it a shot. I gathered my tools together. Only, I didn’t have painter’s tape, so I used packing tape instead. Same difference, right?
I had taken the lamp to Home Depot with me to try and match the color and it turns out Behr makes a shade identical – the third one in from the left on the paint chip above. BUT I also am very good at mixing paint to match things (a hold out from when I dabbled in art school) so I decided to skip buying the sample pot of paint and just use some acrylic paint I already had. Same difference, right?
Once I had the paint mixed and the simple stripes taped, it was time to get painting! I decided since I was hand-mixing the color, it would be best to work from the outside in, so if color variations occurred it would have a neat ombre effect to the middle.
The paint was looking great, but it was really soaking in, so I decided to water it down juuuust a touch, which really seemed to do the trick.
And to pass the time, I decided to gaze into the eyes of Matthew Crawley and the rest of the Downton Abbey gang…
…..a few more stripes were laid down before I even realized what was happening.
Yes, I had a bad case of BLEED going on beneath the tape! I was so drawn into DA that I wasn’t paying attention to how much I had watered down the paint!
So, what started out as a totally free custom rug, turned out to be a totally free blotchy mess! Fortunately, Kermit stepped in and showed me this beauty for the bedroom:
You win some, you lose some. Next time, I’ll spring for the frog tape and sample pot of paint!
What projects have you learned from lately?
~ Beth
B & B Build A Life 
Oh, I love the term “pinstrosity”… I may steal that from you 🙂 I love the green paint chips you picked out – those colors are beautiful! thanks for sharing the bad with the good. mine was nearly a disaster, too. maybe the spring edition challenge will go better for us both 🙂
Haha it’s a good word, though I can’t take the credit. There’s a whole blog full of them! Check it out here: http://pinstrosity.blogspot.com/
(reminds me, I meant to link to them!)
Ahh! I love it! This reminds of Regretsy!
You can’t win them all, right? And at least you got some Downton in. I consider that a win.
hahaha have you been to the site thepintester.com?? she has things happen to her like this pretty much every day plus shes hilarious. i also did my pinterest challenge with acrylic paint..but luckily i didnt have to worry about the bleeding and smudging!! sorry…next time it will be a win!!!