DIY (Semi) Success #1: Adventures of a Newbie Spray-painter

I'm really excited to say that I have found a place to live!! It's less than 10 minutes from work, but the actual apartment complex doesn't fall within the boundaries of my school, so I probably won't have any students living in the same apartment complex as me. Not that it was a huge concern, I just feel like that would be a little bit awkward to be out layin' by the pool and looking up to see a student swimming around with their friends. Anyway - it's a one bedroom, open floor plan kitchen/living room/dining area with a cute, little (emphasis on little) porch. First floor, woohoo - no stairs for moving in and for lugging groceries in! I'll have a washer and dryer IN MY APARTMENT and...wait for it....A DISHWASHER AND GARBAGE DISPOSAL!!! I get that any other rational 24 year old should not be this excited about kitchen appliances, but come on, after living in the dorms for 5.5 years, I'm allowed to be excited about it. Also, ya'll know me (unless you're some random passerby on my blog, if so --- hey there!) and should be excited that my dishes stand a chance of getting done more than, oh, once a month.
Ever since I turned in my application for my apartment, two things have happened. 1) (And I partially blame this on my mother because almost every day, she comes up with things that I "need" for my new apartment, despite the fact that I've been living in apartments for three years now). I've gone shopping almost every day since I found my apartment. I found a couch, which is a necessity, a dresser (buying from a friend of Matt's who's moving), a dining set, a night stand, and then a whole lotta stuff that's not-quite-maybe-could-be-construed-as-necessary. It's been fun and I'm extremely glad that there's this little bit of money left over in an education account for me that wasn't used for college that is now being used for these things. Thanks, Mom and Dad!
2) I've caught the DIY decorating bug. And when I decide I want to do projects, I get kind of obsessed. That is, until I get distracted or something doesn't turn out right and I give up halfway through. LUCKILY this was not the case with my first DIY project for my new place. It might be good to know that last week, one of my purchases was Mark Montano's Big Ass Book of Home Decor which mostly has things that are completely unnecessary but that you can make instead of buying so it seems more critical that you have them in your house. And ya know, buy a whole lot of unnecessary things that you'll use for one project and convince yourself when you buy them that you'll use again. Tin snips, say what!? Today I painted plates. That's right, I decided that it was necessary to make pretty plates despite the fact that I have this set of dishes that I love:

But Mark Montano says it's cool to take glass plates and spray paint the back of them....so I did!! First, I went to Ikea and bought clear glass plates for $0.99 each. Sidenote: This is what makes this particular DIY project so dangerous - the fact that it's so cheap and I will probably soon have plates exploding out of my generous cabinet space in my new apartment.
First, I picked one of the most humid days of the summer and decided I should spray paint multiple layers of paint of a non-porous surface and let it dry the minimum amount of time required between layers. Yes, I was a spray-pain virgin prior to this and this was obviously not the best idea I've ever had, as evidenced by:

 Check out that peeling paint up by the tail of the birdie. It worked out alright because the paint was still sort of tacky, so I just pushed it down and smoothed out the bubbles and then painted the next coat on. I did two coats of the blue because I then I had to spray it black and didn't want any black to show through....except the bird part which was supposed to be black. Note - this is the BACK of the plate that is painted so you have to plan out the shapes that you do and paint the colors in the right order. This also means that you can't just tape a shape down all willy-nilly, oh no, you have to tape it so that the tape won't become part of the "stencil". This would be worked better if I had made my stencil out of contact paper, rather than trying the old roll the tape and stick it under this picture of a bird. Anywho, it worked for a first time.

Two coats of black and a coat of clear later and I was done!

Viola! I think it turned out well for a first attempt and I probably would have put more effort into it if the materials for this project were more expensive than these. This was one of the better (of four) in the set and you can still see a bit of black paint on the bottom edge where the blue paint must not have covered and you can see why using a better stencil would have worked better. Overall, I'll probably keep this one and one other and when I head back to Ikea, I'll get two more to try with. I am happy with the overall idea and do love the concept. Next up: Emily makes a wall sconce. Seriously: who am I, Martha Stewart??