A few months ago I wrote about a DIY project that I wanted to try involving a faux marbling effect and nail polish. The full tutorial is here. Basically, it involves swirling droplets of nail polish around in water and then dipping things into it. Couldn't be simpler right? PLUS! I have so much free nail polish and water! 
I was pretty ambitious on my first try. I tried to marble a large pot for a floor plant. It was a crushing failure. The result was so bad that Dave tried really hard to make me feel better about it. "I kind of like it!" "It looks like Don Johnson." "I think that's why I like it!" I can't really describe what went wrong except that the nail polish dried in the water almost instantly so there was just globs of partially hardened shimmery garbage all over my pot. In the always tasteful palette of black, grey, gold, and turquoise, no less. The next day I went to the local nursery and bought a nice yellow pot that looks lovely in my dining room. THE END. But, it's not. I decided to try again. I decided that the mason jars Dave and I have been using as pencil holders needed to be jazzed up a bit (they didn't.) I just couldn't resist the thought of a delicate white marble next to all of the gold accents in the studio. Let the over-decorating begin! 
Step one: Paint em' white. 
Hey, these look pretty cute right? Maybe I should've just left them. But I'm just not really the type to leave well enough alone, am I? 
The result is f*cked up. Don't get me wrong, I spent a lot of time looking at them with my head cocked sideways trying to make them seem not f*cked up but it just didn't happen. Even Dave had to concede: "Well honey, they sure looked great when they were just white." They certainly did. So I decided to make a new plain white one for Dave. But, for myself I decided to make a tribute to f*cking up. See, I owe the life I have, which I like very much, to a huge embarrassing failure.
When I was 26 I was on the wrong path, headed in the wrong direction and didn’t know it. I had applied to several highly competitive PhD programs in Russian History, located in glamorous locals like Indiana and Pittsburg. I got rejected from ALL OF THEM. I had no idea what to do next, but figured it involved the fetal position.
The magical and somewhat out of character thing that happened after being rejected was that I didn't curl up into a couch ball, I turned the f*ck around. I started to let go of some things that we're dear to me and my ego and admit some hard truths to myself. For starters, I would never learn Russian. At least not in time to make a career of Russian History. Instead, I started reading more about other things that interested me, mostly feminism and witches.
By the next year I applied to Gender Studies programs and got accepted to every school I applied to. I decided to move to Salem and study witches at Simmons College in Boston. And the rest is history. Lovely, witchy, non-Russian history.
Okay, I know, WHAT THE F*CK does this have to do with a pencil cup? AMIRIGHT? Well right after I moved to Salem I saw this postcard on PostSecret and it seemed to leap off the screen and hug me. 
So in honor of fucking up, I give you, my new pencil cup: 
I have no idea where I would be in life without letter stickers and spray paint. Failure, like my pencil cup, is some ugly shit but it can still be useful. "Bake Twin Pies" say the witches. The moon is in Cancer. ALSO! VERY IMPORTANT! DEPENDING ON WHEN YOU'RE READING THIS THERE MAY STILL BE TIME TO CONTRIBUTE TO MY SECOND TEAM HAUSWITCH LOAN FOR FELIPA TO GET A NEW KITCHEN! THE LINK IS HERE! HELP OR SPREAD THE WORD IF YOU CAN!!!
