If at first you don’t succeed, fail, fail, some more.
That was the case with this project. The initial vision and the end result are polar opposites.
This began with a small wooden box I had purchased from Target years ago to hold coasters. It was pale wood with a painted orange lid. Over the years, water rings showed up on the lid (coasters inside; irony noted), so I decided to transform the lid. Easy enough. Maybe not.
My first pass at the transformation involved using leather and suede to make a blocked pattern in blues and gold. I was happy with the look and glued them in place on the top of the lid and inside. Now, I just needed to seal the top. This leads me to the. . .
FIRST FAIL. Rather than use a Mod Podge or leather protectant to seal the top of the lid, I decided to do a straight resin pour. I did what I thought was sufficient due diligence on the process, but found that chemical reaction from the resin leached all the dye out of the fabric and turned the pieces black, with the exception of the gold leather. [insert expletives here]. There’s more. . .
SECOND FAIL. I took the tape dam off and looked at the box. Not only did the fabric blacken, the pour was lopsided in spite of my best efforts to ensure a level surface, and the edges were erratic. And. . .
THIRD FAIL. The inside of the box was no better. I had painted the inside of the box, but the color and look did not come out dense and rich as I’d hoped. In all, the box was a total mess. A more practical person would have called the time of death on the project and moved on.
I spent a week looking at that box, thinking about that box, dreaming about that box and talking about that box. In other words, I obsessed. That box, purchased at Target for less than $10 was now my obsession. How much more time and resources was I going to throw into fixing this mess? A little bit more.
I eventually gave in to the failure of my execution. Rather than wrestle to reconstruct the vision out of the mess before me, I shifted my vision. There was work to do. . .
I took my sander and began leveling the resin and truing up the sides and corners of the lid. Next, I took out my acrylic paints and began painting a rose across the top in blue hues. I added some foil flecking to float across, and then did another pour; this time, a much thinner one.
The pour was successful, but the the sides still needed some finishing. More sanding with incremental grits ensued. Once sanded and wiped down, I repainted the lid sides, and did a final resin dome pour. To finish the box, I lined it with felt, and stained the box a rich walnut.
It was not the vision I started with, but surrendering to the “what so” of the situation – surrendering to the failure – opened up other possibilities and offered me the opportunity to embrace the imperfections of the box. Wabi Sabi.
In the end, it was better.
nuance 