Yes, Billy. Super Glue really does stick to everything…

Hockey Fan and I were planning to paint murals of both PNC Park and Fenway Park for the baby’s room.  For those of you who aren’t sports folks, the former is the stadium where the Pittsburgh Pirates play, the latter where the Boston Red Sox play (the Pirates and the Red Sox are both baseball teams, by the way).  We took panoramic shots of the skyline last time we were the da ‘Burgh (yinz might not know this, but Pittsburgh actually has a really beautiful one) and, having been an obsessed Sox fan living in Boston for six years with other obsessed Sox fans, I know the Boston skyline pretty well.  We were ready!

Then, I went to Bolt, an amazing fabric store here in Portland (http://www.boltfabricboutique.com/) and spotted some Asian inspired remnant squares that screamed to be made into wall hangings, and that went particularly well with the sushi fabric I’d decided to use for the curtains (alas, I did not make the curtains myself.  One of my friends from work offered and I quickly agreed.  The fabric was just too spendy for trials and tribulations) and the Japanese fan (as in the implement used to move air around) that one of Hockey Fan’s friends had brought us from Tokyo and which I had mounted in a fabric-backed shadow box. Inexperienced as I was (and still am) I used fabric glue to attach the fabric to the back of the shadow box.  It’s a little wrinkled and baggy, but the fan covers most of it.  It’s sticking, but I would recommend something a little more substantial.  Or a little more patience on the drying front).

I was going to have Hockey Fan make wooden frames for the wall hangings, but then realized that it would be equally as cost effective, and probably faster, to buy canvases and stretch the fabric over them, at least for the smaller pieces of fabric.  I debated about which adhesive to use and then, in a basket of stuff waiting to go down to the basement, found…

… a staple gun.

Eureka, I thought.  Staples would hold the fabric taut and keep it secure, and the wooden frames of the canvases were thick though that the metal wouldn’t show through the front side.  And my experiment actually worked.  I had to pry out the corners a few times before I figured out that I needed to quasi-mitre them.  And had to pry out the long sides a few times before I figured out that I had to work from the middle out, but all in all, the first one and a half wall hangings were a great success.

And then I ran out of staples.  Instead of the satisfying, loud report of a staple gun driving metal into wood, I got an empty hiss of air and unattached fabric.  We had more staples, but neither Hockey Fan nor myself could get the damn things into the staple gun and we concluded that we had purchased the wrong staples (this was much easier on our egoes than believing that we couldn’t figure out how to load a stapler).

I hate leaving things undone, however.  HATE.  I have a very hard time walking away from a project in the middle, or leaving a room half-cleaned, or dishes in the sink even when the dishwasher is full.  This is something that Hockey Fan and I have had many, many… erm… discussions about in the five years that we’ve been together; ADD and OCD differ greatly on the acceptability of incomplete tasks.

I could wait to start the next wall hanging.  Really I could (eek!).  But I HAD to finish the one I was working on.  I was compelled.  Driven.

More than a little OCD.

I started searching the house, including Hockey Fan’s shop in the basement, for something to use as a bonding agent.  I considered fabric glue, but knew from the shadow box experiment that it wasn’t ideal.  I couldn’t find any regular glue that wasn’t in stick form, and I was relatively certain that it wouldn’t be permanent enough anyway.

And then I found…

… the Super Glue.

I swear it seemed like a good idea at the time.  I knew it would bond, I knew it would stay stuck.  And yes, I knew I wasn’t supposed to touch it directly.  And I didn’t.  I used a piece of scrap cloth, folded over several times, to press the fabric onto the glue that I had put so carefully on the back side of the canvas frame.

Super glue soaks through several layers of fabric rather quickly.

I totally glued the fabric to my hand.

I am a relatively logical person.  I like to think of myself as a relatively smart person.  I have a master’s degree in theology.  I am a nurse — I solve problems in a calm, rational manner every day.

I still glued fabric to my hand with Super Glue.  And when I discovered said gluing, still yelled, “Ah, ah, ah, I just superglued fabric to my hand,” loud enough to bring Hockey Fan running, without realizing that I should probably do something about the gluing, like, immediately.

The good news is, I am not still walking around with fabric Super Glued to my hand.  Both the bottle and the website give instructions on how to remove Super Glue from skin:

“Because Super Glue is so strong and bonds so fast, some people may find that they have accidentally glued two fingers together, or found that that small piece of balsa wood or plastic from a model they were building has completely bonded to their skin! Not to worry, for even though Super Glue is incredibly strong, it has one weakness: acetone.

Acetone is often found in household nail polish remover, and a small amount on the end of a Q-tip or cotton swab applied directly to the glue should dissolve the bond without damaging the skin. Be very cautious in gently peeling the skin apart as in removing a bandage from the skin; pulling the skin apart may rip the skin! Read the label to make sure that the remover actually contains acetone, as more and more manufacturers are turning away from the chemical because of the growing popularity of acrylic nails (which are loosened by acetone).”

— From the “Removing Super Glue section of the Super Glue website                   http://www.supergluecorp.com/removingsuperglue.html

The bad news is, it’s well nigh impossible to remove said glue from skin, and to remove whatever it is that you have glued to yourself from your skin, without removing a couple of layers of skin, despite the claims on the bottle and the website, even if you follow the removal instructions VERY carefully.

Despite all of that, I’ll have you know that I did finish the wall hanging.  It’s the yellow and red one in the picture.

The next time Hockey Fan and I went to Home Depot, we picked up some new staples.  We wanted to make sure we were “getting the right ones this time,” so we talked to the tool guru before making our purchase and explained to him what had happened with our previous box of staples.  He laughed (really really hard) and explained to us that we had been loading the stapler wrong; in our particular model, the staples didn’t sit on the sliding part as they would in an office stapler  but, rather, they slid into the staple gun itself and the sliding part locked them in place when pushed back in.

He swore to us, several times, that it was a very common mistake.

He kept laughing, though.

All in all, the wall hangings came out beautifully.  And the skin on my fingers has grown back.  No scars.

This time…

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