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Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Irreverent DIY Guarantee



There is no shortage of tastefully-lit, artfully-filtered photos of completed DIY projects all over the Internet: I've seen everything from a kitchen table with a poured concrete top and iron pipe legs, to high heels with the undersides painted with sky-blue nail polish. Sure, the table looked great in the bohemian-urban-chic loft, but good luck finding friends to help haul that heavy-ass table down the stairs when you move out of that apartment. And the shoes looked nice in the finished display photo, but after just one night on the town, they'd look way worse than before. A lot of the DIY craft projects circulating on artsy blogs and Pinterest are, at best, impractical; at worst, they're downright stupid. (I'm looking at you, gold-painted honey bears.)

“What? We coordinate perfectly with the chalkboard-painted toilet seat and the television made of wooden pallets.”

Truth be told, I'm not a “crafty” person, despite what my friends tell me. I'll admit to being creative, but I'm definitely not crafty in the sense of “I like to make things for the hell of it in my free time”. When I make or do creative things, it's usually motivated by some kind of necessity, and it's almost always done in the most inexpensively MacGyver-ish way possible using pretty much whatever I have lying around or can easily find at Dollar Tree. Also, because we live in an apartment, projects that take up significant construction or storage space aren't really an option.

So, having said all that, I present you with my Irreverent Guarantee: 
The DIY projects featured on this blog do not require you to be “crafty”, or have previous experience, special equipment, or extra space or money. All projects have been tested for Practicality (i.e “How well does it do what it's made to do?”) and Durability (“Does it last a reasonably decent amount of time with normal expected use?”).

I've made plenty of things that looked great... but fell apart not long after the “Finished Product” photo was taken. I've also seen projects that look really cool, but required materials, space, money, time, and/or effort I just didn't have. Hopefully some of the things I put here can give you some ideas, inspire some creativity, and spare you the headache of making something impractical or flimsy when you could be doing more important things like playing video games or sampling beer or plotting world domination. Or parenting. You know, whatever floats your boat.

Constructed completely out of Mason jars, hot glue, Christmas lights, and chalkboard paint, of course.




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