Pinterest do-it-yourself projects look fun, creative and relatively inexpensive when compared to the same products from stores, but are they really too good to be true? I decided to try a project of my own to see just how easy Pinterest crafts are for the average person.
I decided to recreate a set of decorated Mason jars to add a little fall decor to my apartment. The Pinterest post claimed that the jars were “so cute and SUPER easy to make! Painted them with some chalk paint, did a little distressing, stenciled on the letters and topped them off with some fall colored flowers! Doesn’t get any easier than that!”
The comments made it sound easy enough, so I set out to recreate my first ever DIY craft. The first issue I ran into was finding all of the items needed for the craft. There was a shortage on Mason jars, and none of the ones available matched the size of the jars I saw in the Pinterest photo.
I ended up buying jars that were smaller, but that still worked well enough. Then I picked up some paint and a few flowers to place in the jars once they were finished. Altogether, the project was inexpensive. I paid roughly $20 for all of my supplies, but I also already had paintbrushes and other basic supplies.
Once I started decorating the Mason jars, I ran into another huge problem; the paint would not stick. It ended up taking three coats of paint for each jar, and even then the jars looked splotchy. In the end, the patchy paint made the jars look more distressed, but the task itself was not easy. Note that after this step, your hands will be covered in paint for days.
After the paint dried I started the letters. For this step I recommend using stencils. For someone like me, who is not naturally artistic, the stencils were a huge help. If I decided to do this again, I would secure the stencils to the jar because I had some issues with paint running under the stencils, which made my lines less straight.
Another problem I discovered while painting the letters was that adding new paint had a tendency to wipe away the dried paint already on the jars. Again, this aspect helped make the jars look more distressed, but they also looked a little sloppy in my opinion.
The last step was simply placing fake flowers in the jars. I went with orange flowers to go along with my fall theme, while still staying as true to the original craft as possible.
Overall, my Pinterest DIY project turned out almost as cute as the caption promised, but not identical. The project took me around an hour to make because I had to wait for the paint to dry, so if you do attempt to make these, be sure to block out enough time in your schedule.
I was disappointed that this wasn’t as quick and easy as the caption said, but I am happy with the end product. This wasn’t a complete Pinterest fail, but I am certainly no Picasso.
