don’t judge a Pinterest pin by it’s cover…

I love Pinterest. The ideas are bottomless, the pictures are beautiful, and it’s much easier than having cork boards with millions of scraps of paper all over my house.

So when I came across this “pin” on Pinterest, I thought it would be fun to try it. The description said,

“Elmer’s glue on canvas. Then paint the whole thing one color.”

Sounded easy-peasy…so I picked up a couple small canvases, and of course, my kids decided they wanted to do the project…not me.

Typical.

Try #1: Madi designed her canvas, we traced it with our big bottle of Elmer’s glue and went to bed. But when we came down in the morning, the glue had dried completely flat.

Whoops….

It was time to actually read the directions on the original site (an important lesson when dealing with Pinterest) – and I found a post specifically dedicated to people coming from Pinterest. It specifically mentioned that Elmer’s glue does NOT work, and you have to use dimensional “puffy paint” instead. It also suggested putting the image onto wax paper first and then transferring it to the canvas when you have the exact look and feel that you want.

Whoops again…

I was dealing with a 6 and 4 year old (Parker wanted to make one now too), and there was no way we were going down that path. Plus, they were all excited about painting it, even though the original directions called for transferring to a plain white canvas…no painting.

Try #2: Madi successfully finished her project and promptly wrapped it up for her friend before I could take a picture. Parker designed his…abstract as usual…and painted it green.

It doesn’t really have that super-cool vibe I was originally looking for, but Parker was pretty proud of his artwork…and so was I. (It’s a Christmas tree, in case you were wondering.) Maybe I’ll try doing my own “grown-up” version – wax paper and all – when I find myself in the canvas aisle again in Michaels someday. I think it has potential…especially if you did a white on white quote or something?

But I learned my lesson…don’t judge a Pinterest pin by it’s cover…always follow the link back..and NEVER follow the advice that is posted with the pin!!