First I thought about doing a fun and quirky saying like: 'Not All Who Wander Are Lost...Some are Still Just Looking For Their Keys', or 'Out Running the Zombie Horde Could Come Down to Where You Left Your Keys'. In the end I thought I would rather do something classier than a zombie themed key holder. No offense for my zombie loving peeps, but I just couldn't pull the trigger.
My first step was removing the decorative paper that I had decoupaged on the back a few years back.
I just spritzed some water on the back to reactivate the glue so that it would just scrap off.
Slowly but surely it all came off.
Then I decided that I wanted to have a super rad harlequin pattern on the background.
So then I spent the next hour measuring, and taping off the pattern. It took me an hour because I had help.
Aren't they cut helpers. Totally worth the extra time added to the project because making memories takes time.
Ok, confession time. Obviously the zombie theme made it all the way to the mock-up stage before I realized that it wasn't what I really wanted for my house. I may have a crazy quirky sense of humor, but I just didn't think my home decor could handle it. So, classy it was.
I carried the whole thing outside to give it a quick shot of silver paint.
I went with Rustoleum in Metallic Bright Silver.
First off lets just all agree to pretend that I'm better with a camera, and able to take a picture without having my toe featured in it. Someday I'm going to make it though an entire post without my toe making an impromptu appearance somewhere...but I digress. After this step is when my project hit its first hiccup. While I was allowing it dry out under the sun...in nature, there were apparently two tiny suicidal spiders out there just waiting to ruin my day. When I went out to check on the drying, apparently two little spiders had landed in the wet paint, and flailed about enough to ruin...everything!
So using my putty knife I scraped off what was remaining of the gummy paint. Then I let it sit on my counter for well over a week while I made up my mind on how to fix it, or if I wanted to head in a different direction altogether (or if I just wanted to live like an animal and not keep track of my keys anymore).
In the end I decided I was civilized enough to want to keep track of my keys after all, and wanted to just go with a crisp clean look, and painted the whole thing a nice bright white. I had a tiny little sample size container of paint that I turned into chalk paint with a little bit of plaster of paris, and after two coats I was in business.
So...I got a CriCut Explore for Christmas this year because Señor Hotness loves me, and I have used it for a ton of paper style crafts for everything under the sun it seems, but I had yet to use it to do any vinyl cutting. The youth at church held a MASSIVE garage sale to help raise money for youth camp. Some awesome person donated some Cricut supplies, and a roll of turquoise vinyl. So gave myself 2 whole seconds before I absconded with the goods because lets be honest I REALLY wanted it. Also I didn't abscond with them so much as pay for them. So now that I was a proud owner of a partial roll of vinyl I thought this would be a good project to cut my teeth on.
So in Cricut Design I found this awesome skeleton key design, and chose it as the background.
So other than the fact that my kitchen was obviously trashed, and I was working on this project instead of cleaning it (because thats how I roll). Let me just be honest. Putting vinyl on free hand it WAY harder than you would think. Next time I try something big I will most certainly invest in some transfer paper to make the task an easier one. So after I wrestled that bad boy on there I realized that it was not totally centered on the background. I tried to talk myself into thinking that it was fine. So I snapped some pictures, and texted them to my, go to, truth tellers aka my sisters.
Aren't sisters awesome? They love me, and they feel absolutely no obligation to sugar coat, ANYTHING. So they agreed that it was looking sort of wonky(technical term), and one sided. So instead of peeling that beast of a key off of there, and trying to reposition it...again. It was suggested that I just add a bit of embellishment to try to balance it out.
I found this cool little corner, and cut it out in my vinyl. After I placed it I sent it back out to the ladies, and they all agreed that it was the final touch that it needed to look balanced, and well...awesome.
So at the end of the day I have this super awesome key holder with an awesome classy feel that I spent less than $5.00 on, everything, for it. I can't wait to get it hung on the wall. So the lesson I learned from this project is to not be afraid to change directions in the middle of a project because the end result could be cooler than your original vision could have ever been.
Linked up at: Savvy Southern Style, The Dedicated House, Have a Daily Cup of Mrs. Olson, Shaken Together Life,
