Pinterest, the photo-recipe-craft sharing website, launched six years ago. In those six years, thousands upon thousands of do-it-yourself projects have been uploaded to keep users occupied. After all these years, I decided to get on the site and give two of these projects a shot.
As a broke college student, I was happy to see that a lot of the DIY projects were friendly — almost too friendly. The first I tried was making a key holder to put outside your home — eliminating the inconveniences brought about by forgetting your key inside the house.
All you need for this project is superglue, a rock and an empty pill bottle. You just need to add superglue to the lid and press it onto the rock and viola—you have a place to hide a spare key between some of the stones outside your home. Sounded easy enough.
I set it aside for a day and waited for the glue to dry. To my dismay, when I came back in the morning, the rock had fallen off. Either the glue wasn’t strong enough or the rock was too slippery. Thankfully, I decided to not put it outside. Honestly, keeping a key outside in a clearly orange pill bottle doesn’t sound very safe or smart. You’re better off tucking your keys under the mat or, better yet, carrying an extra key around.
The other DIY project I tried was making lipstick out of crayons. A bizarre idea — but there are people actually praising the results from mixing a few crayons and coconut oil. As I read the step by step instructions, my main thought was, “Is this even safe?” The only proof these people had was that these crayons were “nontoxic,” but is that really a good enough reason to put it on your lips?
Apparently all you need to do is melt the crayon, add a scent to it and mix it with coconut oil. The preferred method is to melt the crayon on a spoon over a candle, but I didn’t have one — so I opted to microwave it, which was very hard to explain to my mother as she watched from a distance. I was a little scared the crayon would explode.
My fear came true. I heard a small pop as the melted wax splattered all over the plate. I left for a few minutes to get a dish rag and by the time I got back, the wax had cooled and hardened, leaving me with a messy cleanup and no new lipstick.
What I realized after these projects was that if you like getting dirty, then DIY is for you. If not, just go to the store and buy real lipstick.