Naomi, Sage – Author at Plaster & Disaster

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a proper disaster confessional post here on the blog. We’ve been distracted by shiny new features, like our truth behind the photo posts and the great amount of joy that we get from doing fake craft projects and writing about them sarcastically.

But the disaster confessional was one of our first series ideas, and it is one that we love. Quite simply it is where we get to tell you all about things that are messed up about our houses or that went wrong with our projects and then not have to do anything to fix them. That’s right, we just confess it is a disaster and move along with our lives. It is freeing and therapeutic, and hopefully makes you feel superior (or at least better about the disasters that you are ignoring, as well).

In the past we’ve shared the whole truth about holes in our homes, we’ve minded the gaps that lurk in old houses, and we’ve caused you to shed your preconceptions about what sheds should actually look like. Today, we’re going tell you about things that fall apart or don’t work out.

“My tiny house leaks” – Naomi

Yeah, I was pretty pleased with myself when I made a planter that looked like an adobe house. I worked on the plans for a while, and when it was done I was so excited to display it in my house!

And I did for a while. However, over time, the wood dowels which were in contact with the damp soil, expanded and contracted enough to crack the clay and cause a piece to break off.

Bummer!

I called out this issue in my original post (there were a few cracks showing by the time I wrote it up, so I proposed the solution of making the holes bigger and setting dowels in with a bit of caulk so they would have some give.). I still think that would work, but if I were making this project again, I would probably just waterproof the whole inside so the wood wouldn’t touch the soil at all. But as it is, the cool look I was going for is sort of ruined.

I may get around to gluing it back together to see if it can look alright. Or I may give up and trash the whole thing. But I haven’t felt like repotting those little plants (who still seem to think it is a fine place to live) so I’ve just been ignoring it.

“Now they’re just tiny shelves” – Sage

Okay so I’m going to cheat a little and not share a project that has actually physically fallen apart. But this is a project that definitely didn’t turn out the way I’d hope, and I have pretty much declared a failure at this point. *cue temper tantrum*

The project in question is my impossibly adorable cat shelves:

So cute, right? But the reality is that Cat #1 (Owen) has only set foot on these once in the six months we’ve had them, the day I put them up.

Cat #2 (Murphy) is a bit more adventurous, and he does spend some time on the top shelf. It melts my heart when I see him up there.

It’s helped that I put a scrap piece of carpet on that shelf — at first, he would go flying off every time he jumped up there. It was hilarious but also a little terrifying….

But the only time he ever goes on the other shelves is if we put cat toys or catnip on them.

Catnip:

Toys:

Cat shelf disaster -- Plaster & Disaster

Please ignore the very dead plant….

These are the only two times I have ever seen him on anything but the top shelf.

The reality is that the shelves are too small and closely staggered for the cats to really navigate. I was working with the space we have, and with our low ceilings (7′) we really don’t have room for a cool ledge or something along the ceiling of a single wall like I know the cats would love. Instead of the shelves I so lovingly built them, they would rather sit here:

And here:

And here and here and here:

I get it, you don’t like the &*$%ing shelves.

So now they’re just strange, small, useless shelves. We can’t put plants on them because they get terrible light, and putting anything else there for display purposes is a recipe for disaster — the one surefire way to get Murphy to go on them briefly is to put something there that he wants to knock down.

One of these days I will probably remove them, but I don’t feel like patching the walls so I’ve been procrastinating. Why can’t my cats just appreciate what I’ve made for them?!?!?

Have you had projects fall apart or not work out after you made them? What did you do — re-do it better, or give up on the whole thing?

We’re back for another installment of one of our favorite features: the truth behind the photo. The thing about blogs is that you experience other peoples’ homes and projects entirely through photos, and it’s easy to forget that not everything is as it appears. We’re not talking photoshop or deliberately misleading photos — but angles, lighting, and cropping can make a big difference in transforming an image and even make the difference between a project that looks like success on film but was a disaster in real life.

We love sharing these truths because some of the things that go on behind the camera are pretty ridiculous — and if we didn’t tell you about absurd things like the time Sage climbed up a ladder outside her house to photograph Sam’s study, then we’d have to confront some scary questions about the way we choose to spend our time. Instead, we just get to write it off as blog content.

So today we’re sharing the truth behind some recent projects: our “bloggeriest crafts of early 2016,” aka the raccoon oven-baked clay trinket dishes and Pantone color-dipped cork chandelier. You might have thought these projects were ridiculous enough on their own, but the behind-the-scenes had us laughing even harder than the final results.

First up, the trinket dishes with the adorable raccoon face/butt combo:

These were total spoofs (raccoons eat trash and carry rabies, people), but the final photos had even the two of us thinking maybe we were onto something. I mean seriously, that is a well-styled shot. But now we have to let you in an a sad little secret:

Okay so we want to be totally clear: normally we don’t tell you that a project worked when it didn’t, because that would be outright lying. But these were joke projects that were never intended to be replicated. So we omitted a crucial little detail, which is that after we’d shaped our dishes and were ready to bake them we noticed this on the packaging:

In case you’re having trouble reading this, it says: “Do not bake or fire.” And, “Never hardens.” Um, say what now? Somehow we managed to grab the exact wrong clay while running around Michaels. Obviously we were left with no choice but to forge ahead and deceive you all via photographic trickery.

Our first challenge was that we want to add little legs to the dishes, but we thought they’d be so soft they’d sag. So we did what any normal person would do, and used the lids of mason jars to reinforce the bottom of the dishes. We were already in deep at this point, there was no turning back.

We were also worried we’d have trouble painting on the soft clay, but it worked just fine. And they turned out to be so adorable that we were glad they were actually totally unusable or else we probably both would have ended up with ironic raccoon trinket dishes on our bedside tables, thus becoming the punchline of our own joke. There’s really nothing worse than that.

We also had a little too much behind-the-scenes fun with our amaaaaaazing color-dipped shabby chic cork chandelier.

First off, question: what’s more ridiculous than this craft project? Answer: the amount of work that we put into getting perfectly-styled photos for this craft project.

The Truth Behind the Bloggeriest Crafts - Plaster & Disaster

Thank you to cameraman Brad, who at this point has accepted that there’s no point asking questions when Very Serious Blogging Activities are underway

We also realized partway through the project that the cork strands make incredible necklaces, so we clearly had to pause for a brief fashion photo shoot (no doubt we are the most stylish people you know).

Of course we have to get meta with this and show you the truth behind the photo of the truth behind the photo, which is us using a selfie stick (for the very first time…Sage won it at an office holiday party Yankee Swap) to snap this picture.

And of course here’s a photo of Brad taking a photo of us taking a photo of ourselves with the selfie stick:

And then a photo of us looking at the photo Brad took of us using the selfie stick:

So in summary, we took a break from making a ridiculous satirical craft in order to festoon ourselves with cork necklaces and then take a photo of ourselves with a selfie stick while Brad took a photo of us taking a photo of ourselves and then we took a photo of Brad doing that and then we looked at the photo and took a photo of that too. Absurd? Undoubtedly. But we seriously suspect that this is the sort of thing that’s going on behind the camera a lot of the time when people share “candid” photos of themselves online.

We hope this gave you a little taste of what it’s like to be behind the camera with us without actually having to spend an entire day of your life making joke crafts. Next week we have a little more disaster for you (as usual), plus Sage is starting to tear her kitchen apart for the Great Kitchen Renovation of 2016 and Naomi will be sharing progress on her bedroom makeover — stay tuned!