Truth Behind the Patriotic Photos

The internet is full of blogs full of pretty pictures: pristine lofted workspaces, delicately decorated parties, perfect homes, and hairstyles that have at least 15 steps in them.  The internet is a beautiful place!

But that’s not why you read this particular blog, is it?  We know you can find much prettier pictures elsewhere, so we figure that you choose to spend your precious time reading Plaster & Disaster because you like seeing the disaster parts.  And we appreciate that about you! Thus, even when we do show you pretty pictures, we’re committed to showing you the “ugly truth” that is happening behind them.

That’s how our “truth behind the photo” series was born, which shows the ridiculous backdrops, messes we moved out of the way, awkward poses, and makeshift set-ups which are behind our prettiest pictures. (See past posts: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6)

And what’s prettier than the 4th of July crafts we did a few weeks ago?  Those things were literally only created to be in very bloggery photographs (and to see if you guys could tell which one was the spoof and which were real).

Like the way inequity lurks behind so much of what we celebrate in this country, there is also an ugly truth lurking behind each of these photos.

Take the pool noodle firecrackers to start.  They sure look cheery hanging in the colorful room!

Well, the truth is that they were a pain in the butt to hang.  They kept slipping around and falling over lopsided.  It was only more difficult because we didn’t want to hang them in any sort of permanent way (the horror!) so we used painters tape to stick them to the beam in Naomi’s ceiling.

Not how you’d really decorate for a party!

You can also see that, because we knew we’d only be taking photos in one direction, Naomi didn’t bother cleaning the clutter out of her living room.

The pineapples were the surprise star of the day, proving themselves to be remarkably satisfying and easy to spray paint, and also incredibly photogenic:

Despite this being the easiest project ever, you bet that we found a way to complicate it!  You see, we didn’t want to wait for the pineapples to dry completely because we wanted to get this photographed and be done with it.  So that led to us loading still wet pineapples very carefully onto a board, and walking them the long way from Naomi’s back yard into the house:

They’re much heavier and wobblier than they look.  We can only imagine what the neighbors thought as we carefully traversed two sets of stairs and wove our way around many obstacles.  Very.  Slowly.

And then there’s our patriotic rice candle holders, looking so bright against a white background.  Whose beautiful white loft crafting space is this, you wonder?

No one’s.  It’s just Sage holding up a board painted white in the middle of Naomi’s dining room.

Finally, the biggest blogger trick that we played was in the creation of our patriotic door mat.

This was by far the most complicated of the 4th of July projects we did.  There were like 4 whole steps.  So it’s no wonder that by the end of it we were a little fatigued with crafting and wanted to cut corners in the way we attached the bandanna fringe.

And by cut corners, we mean…

… not attach it at all!  It really only had to be assembled to be in one photograph so we decided not to waste our precious tape, staples, or time attaching it.  We just stuffed the edges under the mat and took the picture.

So, as you can see, our beautiful day of crafting wasn’t so beautiful after all!  Thanks for liking us, anyway.