Poor College Crafts

The summer before I left for college I went crazy and spent a lot of money, on a lot of things. My family jokes about the floor lamp I bought without a reason other than it was $4 (it stands in my living room today, great investment). I was going to college and I didn't know what I'd need. I bought a lot of things I just didn't and a lot of things that while, yes useful, were UGLY. One such thing is my Goodwill table.

Let me just say that Goodwill is a godsend. I spend a lot of time trying to save my money. Buying what I need for as close to nothing as possible. I'm sure one day I will come an extreme coupon-er like I've seen on TV. Every year for Christmas I buy all my presents (family gives me money to shop for myself) from Goodwill. I want the clothes and jeans are too expensive, but I digress.

That summer before college I was at Goodwill and found a side table. It's cardboard but sturdy. It was also purple. Ugly purple. This is one of those side tables that can be bought at Target for $15. I got it for $1.50. Another reason why I love Goodwill: Used doesn't mean in bad shape (but I wouldn't buy couches there). Purple is not one of my favorite colors so I decided to get crafty and change it. Spray paint has become my best friend.

Its actually sideways here but still gets the point across. This is the top. I started off by spray painting the table yellow since it is my roommate and mine's favorite color. I considered her while creating this since I didn't know her yet and didn't want to seem inconsiderate. The legs were sprayed as well. I made the mistake of spraying this on the cement (though I don't regret it) because I didn't want the grass to stick/mess up the paint.

It took about 10 minutes for the paint to dry. While I was waiting on that I went into the house and drew some stars on a piece of poster board. I also wrote the word "Believe" in blue (I will explain what happened in a moment). I cut all of it out. I then went back outside. I placed the "Believe" on the table and used a few pieces of scotch tape to secure the poster then began to spray paint in blue.

When it comes to these projects (and everything else) I am impatient so I started to spray paint the red stars before the blue had dried. When I finished with the stars and removed the paper some of it (the paper) had dried to the table hence the weird spots and the absence of "Believe". I tried to scrape the paper off but that didn't work so well. Essentially I just sprayed the entire bottom to get rid of the "believe" word. Because the table is made of cardboard the paint doesn't scratch off (easily).

I was going for the college, inspirational look. I have seen this same thing done with other stencils (flowers, hearts, trees, children's hand prints). Two of these tables pushed together make a good coffee table. I've seen this with half a stencil on one table and the other half on the other table.

Right now I don't have batteries in my camera so I'm posting past crafts. I didn't get this idea from pinterest but I have seen it on there.