Learn from your mistaks

There is a phrase in the knitting world, coined by Mary Beth Temple in her book The Secret Language of Knitters. Most times, it gets paraphrased as “It isn’t a mistake, it is a design element.” I try to carry this thinking to all things I do. Another way, to think of this, is: “Crap! Well, how do I make this work?”

I ran into this more times then once with the cards I made today.

Before I get to my cards, I want to share my inspiration. I love challenges, especially when a group of people is working on them together. They are also great for getting the creative juices flowing. Today, I combined three to make my main card. Make sure to check out all of these challenges, and go back to past ones. Something may just jump out and get you the start for your next card. If something jumps up and tries to bite you, I would smack it.

One, that I love, is Color Throwdown. What I love about this challenge blog, is that it doesn’t just give you colors, but a photo that they pulled the colors from, which can give you ideas by its self. This weeks challenge is…

Color Throwdown #324 Click on photo for a direct link to this challenge. Full rules are on the right-hand side.

See?! How can you not be inspired by this beautiful photo!

The second blog I used as inspiration was Freshly Made Sketches. These ladies do a verity of different card sketches. This weeks is great for a clean and simple, and it just called to me.

Freshly Made Sketches #168 – A Sketch by Amy. Direct to challenge by clicking photo. Rules within the post.

I have a very simple, classic style in all things. This just has so many things you can do, but I wanted to keep it as simple as the sketch looked.

The last blog, I used for inspiration, was a hard one to make work, and only made it into my last, and final card. Simon Says Stamps is an online store that I haven’t bought from yet, but that is mostly because I haven’t had the funds to justify a big enough purchase for the shipping. Their shipping is low, but when you have an Amazon Prime account, free 2nd day shipping is really hard to beat. Maybe for my birthday in a few months.

Anyways, they also have a challenge blog. As I just found this blog, I don’t know how they run, but I liked the theme a lot; Something New (Rules on the left-hand side).

So last night, while I was waiting for my hubby to get home with dinner like items, I went through my old (read 10-ish years) 12×12 scrapbooking paper. I loved scrapbooking, but I didn’t like the idea of having to find homes for all the albums I would fill. Cards, you make them, and then, and I love this, you give them away! And I have to say, I have been able to keep a nice balance between stash of cards for “oh crap” moments, and room for more cards. I found these two papers and was excited to start the cards the next day. Why wait? Had friends over for games. I won Phase 10.

So after being a nerd and measuring the sketch to figure out how big to cut things, doing a conversion with my TI-83 I got in high school, I ended up not using those numbers on my first card.

So I had this idea. If I use Ranger Studio multi-medium, matte, to glue my vellum down, I could use black Enamel Accents, also from Ranger, I could hide the glue.

As my gamer friends say; Fail! It also didn’t help that I smacked the card right after I put the dots down. I didn’t see many ways to fix this, but I learned some things. So plan B.

Did the next one, but when I put the dots on, I put two dots too close, and they ran together. Dang it! Ok, I can fix this. Let’s make a full border?

O…K? Yeah, wasn’t happy with that one either. I was done with the accents. I went digging for something more solid to cover the glue. I found my clear rhinestones. Score! Put the layers together, put my Bluetooth speaker on it to let the Sakura Quickie Glue Pen dry. Meantime, placed the sentiment on my stamp press using my much-loved Technique Tuesday set called ” Say it-Happy.”

And here is the card I am happy with and will enter in the challenges. Sometimes mistakes can be called a design element. And other times, you just want to say something you shouldn’t around your kids, and start over. But if you can learn from the goofs, you will end up with something close to what you want.

Hope you enjoyed the rant and enjoyed the card. Until next time, DFTBA.