So I recently discovered that painting a paddle is the worst thing you will ever do in your life unless you’re just amazingly talented and go do awesome things with wood and paint. I am not one of those people. My goal for this post is to tell you my process on trying to decorate a wooden paddle.

First I had to sand the darn thing which is messy and takes forever. You have to sand with the grain or you will just screw up the wood so after I realized that the hard way I was on a not so smooth ship to decorating my paddle.

Once my wood was sanded and smooth I spray painted my paddle a navy blue. My goal was to have it navy blue and paint pretty flowers on it but I successfully ruined the paint on my paddle. Lesson learned: you can’t expect to spray paint the front of the paddle, have it dry, and then spray paint the back without ruining it. Spray paint does this awesome thing where it drips underneath the paddle so when you go to lift it up, the paint rips off and sticks to the trash bag. So I ended up having to respray paint it. I let it dry again and then tried to add my design. I quickly realized that paint pens are the gracious gift of god but that my handwriting is not. So I ended up wiping the paint off and again ruining my paddles paint. I resprayed and messed up again but this time I messed up with glitter! So I ended up having to use rubbing alcohol and a paint scraper to chisel away my woes.

(Before the epic screw up)

On my what felt like a millionth retry I listened to my roommates advice. I put modpodge down and then put purple glitter all over my paddle in a “I give up with anything else” attitude. Then I painted my sorority letters on paper, WHICH IS WAY EASIER THAN ON WOOD OR ANYTHING ELSE and then modpodged that onto my paddled. Then I added a bow to the neck of the paddle because bows fix any major screw ups. On the back I used the paint pen to write a sweet message to my big about how many times I redid her paddle and that she better love me anyways. (:

I did do one thing successfully! I bought wooden letters to spell out BIG and painted them a very pretty purple and put polka-dots on them!

What did I learn during this whole process? Never in my life with I ever want to decorate a paddle but I might just do it now that I posses all this knowledge I have passed onto you(:

I also tried to paint a pretty canvas for my big but I learned that if you press too hard with a paint pen it will put a whole through your art work, causing you to give up and chuck it all in the trash with no hope for a return or better day in the crafting world.