03.22.10

i love me some spray paint. the opportunity to use it doesn't come up very often; i made silver ornaments for our christmas tree a few years ago and have long-standing plans to make a magnetic chalk board (if someone will step up and sell me a reasonably-priced-but-interesting-looking vintage frame, brooklyn flea), but joe tends to ignore me when i point out poorly finished wooden things at thrift stores and note that we could paint them. finally i managed both to read the faux porcelain pottery tutorial over at ps - i made this... and to finish the fancy bottle of rum* joe's coworker gave us for christmas (he gifts us with liquor without provocation every now and again; i don't understand it, but i like it). Project Adler-Inspired Vase was born.

rum bottle (before)

ye olde rum bottle. it's lovely, thick, bubbly glass, and probably would've made a fine vase on its own - but when one must paint, one must paint. i coaxed the labels off with some goo gone and ran it through the dishwasher.

day 224: vase in progress

per the tutorial, i used a sharpie to draw lines on the bottle before puffy painting it. i thought the red lines would be light enough to cover with paint, but i ended up using something like five coats. if there's such a thing as an extremely light-colored sharpie, i'd recommend that.

after letting the bottle dry overnight in a kitchen cabinet (the kitten can be trusted with nothing at this point - last week he pulled joe's only credit card out of his money clip and hid it under the rug), i newspapered the balcony within an inch of its life and spray painted like it was my job. i started out with a cute little craft can of krylon from the local art store and ran out long before the red lines disappeared; i came back the next day with a giant can and felt much more powerful. and deeply toxic.

finished vase (and hell's kitchen tulips)

et voila! i could pretend that i've stopped anthropomorphizing things and didn't immediately refer to the finished project as count vasie, but i think we all know the truth.


*pyrat, that is. i'm not usually a rum fan, dark and stormies notwithstanding, but this stuff (from the folks who make patron) is good enough to drink on the rocks.

7 comments:

jamie said...

well. done.

i would not have believed it, had i not seen the process photos.

count vasie. can you name the things in my life, pls?

kidchamp said...

with manray, emmylou, and diamond dog in your house? you don't need me, man.

valya said...

i once ran across a yellow sharpie in my desk and wondered when that would ever be useful. perhaps for this project?

excellent use of puffy paint, my dear.

wabes said...

neat! crafty! unexpected!

remind me to tell you the jonathan adler-law school story someday...

tanthalas said...

and to think the kitten might have fit into the vase at one point!

LPC said...

Good lord. It looks so, so, intentional. You know my crafting abilities intimately so can most likely understand my reaction. I plead small motor impairment, for lack of any other explanation.

Rachel (heart of light) said...

I love it! I keep mentioning this project to D, but I still haven't gotten around to it. Despite having a surplus of cheap glass vases and spray paint. Love spray paint.