Not All Crafts Are Wins

Hey everyone. It's Jes again. I'm here today with a set of fail cards.  Have you ever sat down to craft and ended up messing up every single project? That was me today. I forgot about Mother's Day this weekend, and have spent the day trying to come up with two cards to send to my mother and mother in law. After several failed attempts I realized that it just wasn't going to happen today.

The first several attempts were crumpled up and thrown away. The last few that I'll show here were ones that I thought I might be able to salvage.

 This one here isn't terrible, my biggest fail here, was using the wrong paper.  I used regular cardstock, which worked well with the embossing, but didn't like my watercolor attempt at all. What you see here is after several minutes of trying to flatten it out after it completely crumpled in on itself. I might cut it down and paste it on another piece of card stock.

Tip #1: Know your materials. In crafting (at least for me) last minute additions don't often work out.  If you're using plain cardstock, watercoloring will not work.

This one actually looks fairly pretty. A few things about it bother me though. For one, black background and Mother's Day don't really go together. I thought I'd try something out of the box and ended up really disliking the final effect.  This black cardstock was extremely flimsy too, which made the card feel very cheap. The final thing about it that caused it to end up in the fail pile is the fact that it is off centered. The bottom part can be salvaged for a congratulations card down the road. 

Tips #2 and 3: Invest in good quality card stock. The cheaper stuff just doesn't hold up well, and flimsy cards feel like the folded printer paper cards we used to make as kids.  Using little pencil marks to mark the center of the paper is helpful and you don't end up (usually) with images that are not lined up. 

In this last one, the mistakes were just flukes. I'll be redoing this card tomorrow and using more caution.  The first mistake was the two different colors for the vine and the leaves. It just throws it off a bit.  Second, I smudged it really bad by pulling up my stencil before the leaves were completely dry. The final mistake, was when I pulled up the tape holding it to my table. It ripped the top part of my card.  If it had just been any one of the mistakes, I probably would have finished the card and sent it anyway, but all three was just too sloppy for me to use. Bonus win: I finally used the right paper!

Tip #4: Be patient.  If you try to pull up your stencils or tape too soon, your watercolors will smudge or run together giving you a muddy look. 

My final tip is: Don't get discouraged. Sometimes craft projects just don't work the way you pictured. Take a break and try again later.

Thanks for reading. If I end up with a set of cards that turns out tomorrow, I'll add a new post.