PINTEREST PROJECT: SUCCESS! (...SORT OF)
Hello, my name is Ann Burr and I am addicted to Pinterest. Awareness is the first step, or so they say. But honestly? I'm probably not going to be trying to quit anytime soon. Pinterest is a time suck, but it's not crystal meth or anything (and kids, crystal meth is really, really bad and don't ever try it, also you probably shouldn't be reading this blog because there's lots of swears).
The worst thing about Pinterest, in my humble opinion, is that it sometimes tells enormous lies and makes you think you can do things that are not actually possible. I know this because I have fallen for these lies several times.
But every now and then, Pinterest is nothing less than a gift from the heavens, especially for DIY kid-type stuff. That Christmas was a smashing success and had the added bonus of saving me some money and making me feel crafty. Win/Win.
The feral children little angels are 7 and 9 now, and my house is basically an armory for Nerf guns and those fucking foam darts I spend hours picking up off the floor, which is an exercise in futility because there are always more.
So when I saw this:
...it seemed like a perfect project, despite the fact that the child in the picture is clearly cheating by shooting from a distance of maybe 6 inches and also the way those corners of the cut-out squares have no tape makes me crazy.
But other than that, it seemed like a great idea. The kids could shoot at something other than each other (or me), and who knows? Maybe one of them would develop amazing accuracy, and take up riflery.
I spent a lot of time lost in daydreams of one or the other of my progeny participating in the Olympic Pentathalon (I already have them fencing and taking horseback riding lessons - add shooting and they'd be more than halfway there) and as soon as I came to, I clicked through to find this blog post which explains how to make the thing, step by step. I immediately started looking for an appropriate piece of cardboard.
Fortunately (for the credit card companies) I shop online. Like, a lot. Which means I have an inordinate amount of cardboard in the house at all times (except for the afternoon of the day we go to the town dump and chuck it all down the recycling chute), so finding exactly what I needed was not a problem.
I'll spare you the painful details involved in the actual work - mostly because I forgot to take any pictures while I was doing it - but suffice it to say that cutting any sort of thick-ish cardboard into a decent circle is a total bitch, even with a box cutter. Also, you have to weight those circles with pennies taped to the back because otherwise they won't hang properly from the straw-holder-thing, and figuring out how many pennies is enough weight but not too much is a really annoying process.
Once I finally had the circles cut out, two went to the boys for decorating, and because shooting is for girls too (and because pink duct tape is awesome), my Significant Other's progeny and I got the other two.
Not bad, right? Of course, seeing it next to the original I'm annoyed that it's not nice and white, but whatever. At least MY cut-out squares have tape corners! (I may need to get a life.) By the way, my next project is painting the brass on those fireplace doors black. Checking Amazon, I see I ordered the paint for this project on October 15, 2014, so you know. Any day now.
As it turns out, it's a very, very good thing I didn't spend any more time on this Nerf target than I did, because none of the children had any interest in it at all. In fact, and this is absolutely true, I haven't SEEN the fucking thing in weeks and when I asked one of the boys where the hell it was, he looked at me like he had no idea what I was talking about, let alone its location. I mean, this house is big, but it's not THAT big - where did it go???
So in the end, I'm not really sure whether to put this project in the "win" column or not. I mean, it came out pretty well. But it was never used. Not once. And as it has apparently walked out of the house on its own, the thing may or may not be possessed. Let's call it a draw.
Are you guys craft-masters, capable of anything Pinterest throws your way? Or have you failed as miserably as I have at something that looked so great pinned to your board? Share with the group!
XOXOXO
ABC
