I have been working in the Creative Industries for over 20 years. Painting murals for over 10 years and lived in four different countries throughout my career. I have made so many mistakes on client projects, on my own projects and in life. I don't regret a single mistake. I am embarrassed by some of them, but each mistake was needed to grow and evolve. It's so easy to flick through social media images and make assumptions about my business. I am writing this blog post to show you the messy side of business that doesn't always make it to social media. I make all the mistakes too. I hope I make some mistakes, and tell you about them so you don't make them too. Here are a few of them...
Paste ups instead of paint Let's start with the biggest mistake with the most amount of tears. In 2016 I was asked to paint 8 murals on a school campus during the school holidays. I designed them. Got approvals. Explained that these were going to be paste ups. Everything got the go ahead. So I spent a week pottering around the school installing the paste ups (which cost a mint to print). Students and teachers came back to school and I received an email saying 'why have you stuck up paper instead of painting murals'. Ahem. You can see where it's going from here. I then spent a weekend with my husband and 18 month old son power washing off the paste ups, prepping stencils and spraying them in the dark. You can see a time-lapse of the removal below. If I were to do this project again I would have had a contract and clearly explained the process and the outcome to the clients. All fixed now. Someone actually sent me a photo of one of the murals last week and it's going strong!
Faded paint During the pandemic it was near impossible to buy spray paint. All stocks of white and black in Australia were gone. I could only get my hands on a paint brand I'd not used before. We had a 60m x 5m wall at a school to paint. I grabbed all the cans I could and along with the students, tackled the wall. It looked amazing. Until two week later when the spray paint started fading to white. When I called the spray paint company their response was 'too bad'. My assistant and I then had to re-paint the wall ourselves during the school holidays. I had to buy house paint (as I knew it'd stand the test of time) which cost a fortune. The whole wall has now been re-painted. If I did this project again, I would not use this spray paint brand. I will be testing various spray paint brands and releasing the findings in a blog post - so you can find out what brand failed when I post the findings.
Paint check On another project, only last year, I painted a two story office. The design was beautiful, colours perfectly chosen. I got the 10L tub of background colour, popped it open and slapped it on the wall. A lovely deep blue. I proceeded to then paint all the layers over the top over the next 3 days. When I was about 1 hour from finishing, the client said 'why is the background blue? It's meant to be sage green.' Huh? I had the wrong colour in the 10L tub and didn't even check before applying it to the wall. Off to the paint shop again. Bought another 10L bucket and then painted the background again. This was a really avoidable mistake. Check your paint against your design before applying it.
Painted car Yup. It's exactly as it sounds. I parked my car too close to the wall I was painting. The overspray from the paint gun I was using sprinkled my car with a dark blue speckle look. It took me hours of scrubbing the car (but not too much to damage the paint job) to get most of the paint off. Some is still there. Now my white Rav4 looks like an Easter Egg. Don't park so close to the wall.
I have so many more stories. In my Online Creative Business Group Coaching program I have uploaded The Business of Murals online course with a whole section called 'Don't do what Sarah did' which tells you about more projects I made mistakes on in the hope you don't make the same mistake. What mistakes have you made?