Sticky, Icky, Ewww!

Have you ever worked on a project and in the midst declared to yourself "this is the first...and the last time I'll ever do this"? Well, my latest project has me declaring this ; and rather loudly I might say. After perusing blogs one morning I came across a dresser done by Kristy over at  4theloveofwood.blogspot.com/ that I fell in love with. It was turquoise and white, but what I liked about it most was the curvy detail she added to the front. No problem, I can do this...or so I thought.

Here is the little beauty  that I started with. She was in pretty rough shape. Although the CL seller didn't declare it, I am pretty sure she had taken a dive out of a moving vehicle at some time during her life. You may not be able to tell from my picture but she had some serious road rash on one side and was completely missing one of her corners which I had to re-invent with some JB Weld. None the less, she had good lines and for $20 I was going to make her work.
 

I decided that I would find a fabric pattern that I liked..ala Pinterest, copy it, enlarge it, transfer it to some clear contact paper, cut it out and oi la; my own custom stencil that I could stick to the drawers, paint over and remove. Piece of cake right? After all, I've done virtually the same thing with rub on decals and had great results. So, here's where my lesson in reality began.

I began by sanding and priming as I always do. I had chosen a color combo of aqua blue for the resist or pattern design and dove grey for the base and overcoat. I spent a good long time cutting my stencil out and applied it ever so carefully to my four dresser drawers peeling off the backing as I went and cutting between the drawers once I was sure the pattern lined up. I carefully burnished the edges so that none of the gray paint would bleed under the contact paper.

Now it was time to apply two coats of the gray top coat right over the top of my transfer paper. Sorry you can't see it too well, but you can get the general idea. Here is where I actually stood around and watched the paint dry with anticipation...I couldn't wait to peel off the contact paper to reveal my beautiful design. By all appearances it didn't let me down, nice crisp lines with only a few touch ups needed.

I grabbed my tiny artist brush and sat down on the kitchen floor ready to finish up the beautiful transformation. I was wearing a purple sweater and when I lifted my arm from the drawer to work on another area there was purple fuzz everywhere! I tried to brush it away but nope...it wasn't budging. Further investigation lead to the discovery that it was sticky everywhere the contact paper had been, my whole new beautiful aqua design. Now what? I broke out my "go to" product Goo Gone and started wiping with a kitchen towel...nope not coming off. Eventually with much determination, I discovered that a green kitchen scrubber pad used gently with the Goo Gone followed by a dry towel would do the trick.

So, the long and the short of it is this. I have now discovered the hard way that there must be a better way to do this. Contact paper has many great uses, but I'm not so sure this is one of them. I am proud however that I saw this tiny photo on Pinterest, and turned it into this. Let's just keep all that happened in between there a secret between you and me. Okay?

Linking up with these lovely ladies: