Quick Fixes: Alternate Ending Edition?

     One of the perils of working from home is that it's hard to designate a work space, so if you're anything like me you end up working in bed all day. Supposedly that's bad because then your brain associates climbing into bed with working instead of sleeping, so it's harder to sleep at night or whatever (the human brain is an amazing piece of machinery. And also really stupid). Plus I feel like if you sit on memory foam all day your ass'll turn to straight-up mush. I can't work at my desk because the chair is really uncomfortable and the height of it would make my head snap off my neck after a few hours of working (I hunch. I hunch bad). So I've been trying to get into the habit of using my super-comfy glider and a lap desk. That way it's comfy, I don't slouch over what I'm doing, and I can set everything aside to get up and walk around every now and again (so my butt doesn't turn to Play-Doh. The concern is real). The only problem? After staring at that lap desk for hours every day I started to resent it for its ugliness. I don't know why; it's not like it had, like, a repeating print of the poop emoji all over it. I just got really tired of looking at its fake wood-grain top. I make no claims that this is rational. It is but my truth. 

Ugh, look at it. It's like...smug. 

       My weird projections about the bad attitude of a slab of compressed sawdust aside, it also had some nail polish and ink stains on it that weren't exactly gorgeous. So a plan was hatched! First let's see how it turned out. 

Ta-daaaaa! If this picture looks hastily taken, it's because my camera kept saying "battery exhausted" and turning off before I could take an after picture and I was like "okwhateverfine camera, WE'RE ALL EXHAUSTED BUT WE STILL DO OUR JOBS." 

     So to get to this I took a roll of wrapping paper, cut a manageable approximation of the right size, then hit the lap desk with some spray glue and carefully rolled the paper across it, trying to keep it from getting any bubbles underneath. Then when it was all smooth I flipped it over and traced around it with an x-acto knife and did two coats of clear lacquer to seal it, so if I spill Diet Coke on it or something it'll wipe right off.

THAT'S HOW IT COULD HAVE HAPPENED.

     Now if I made that seem like it was all sunshine and daisies and the magical crafting gods smiled down upon me and said "let thine endeavors go smoothly on this day," that is because I am a tricksty hobbits who trickstily arranged her blog post to make her look like less of a failure. But then thought "whatever, everyone already knows I'm a failure" and decided to include the rest of the story too. 

     What actually happened was that when I bought the wrapping paper I thought "Oh I'll just mod-podge this onto the top and it'll be all glossy and decoupaged and cool!" And so I did a nice thin even layer of mod-podge, then carefully rolled my paper across, squeegeeing out any air bubbles as I went...only to have it turn wrinklier than the littlest piggy at the market after a long bath when it dried. At this point I stared at it, seething and remembering the last time I used mod-podge, which also ended with me saying "Why do people even use this? It suuuuucks!" Seriously, I am hard-pressed to remember a mod-podge project that didn't end in total unmitigated disaster. So it looked like crap, and it was too late to just pull it off and try again, so I spent twenty minutes scraping it off with a...spackler? What is this thing even called?

     So that was fun. And by fun I mean I sandpapered off my fingerprints trying to get the last bits off. 

     But all's well that ends well, and it looks nice now. And I learned an important lesson: Never to try a mod-podge project again as long as I live. Yay, learning!