My craft FAIL that became a craft SAVE!

I love trying new techniques.  And I will happily jump on the next bandwagon of “must have products” be it embossing powders or spray inks as well as the next embellishment craze from eyelets to birdcages.  I admit I have gotten a lot better than when I first started crafting.  Of course, since I was new, I started “behind” everyone else and I had to have everything that “they” were using because if I only had the right tools my art will be just as beautiful as theirs and I, too, will be making book deals, videos and appearances on Carol Duvall (I miss that show SO much!!).  Now I know that the chances of me being able to sustain myself purely on the items I make are slim to none – and I am very OK with that.  And I know that no matter how many cool art toys I have I will never be as good as my favorite artists.  And that’s cool, too, because they will never be as good as me, either. On that note I want to introduce you to a craft fail of mine.  Granted, there are a lot of these fails, but they rarely around long enough for me to photograph it or it is absolutely too horrendous to share. And I thought this fail was funny enough to share, especially since I saved it.

On Unruly PaperArts (one of my very favorite places) they have 2 challenges each month and I have been trying to participate in them (in fact, in 2014 I WILL participate in each of them) and one of last months challenges was to use a stencil in your project.  Easy peasy, especially since I have jumped on that bandwagon wholeheartedly and I have a few (really, just a few!) stencils.  One of the best things about Unruly PaperArts is the columnists – they write up tutorials and such to match the challenges and the first one of the month was The Neat Freak: Sharing her Fav technique using stencils (I have her permission to share this with you).  I could do this! Now, you really need to go read the article (should only take you a few) otherwise, the rest of this fail is not going to make sense.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.

See how nice her stenciling print came out? This is what mine looked like:

(the green spray was already on the paper, I thought it would make a very festive holiday card).

 If you look close you can kinda see the outline of the houses, kinda. But 
remember, this isn't the paper I used to make the card; I used the paper
that I sprayed on - this paper is the failed result of trying to duplicate
the print technique shown on Unruly PaperArts.

OK, so what do we do? How can I salvage this? I thought the houses came out fine so I decided to use them and turned a fail into a win!

This is what I used to make my “winning” card:

• The Crafters Workshop 6x6 stencil designed by Ronda Palzzari, Home Sweet Home
• Dylusion’s Ink Spray in Postbox Red
• Piece of white cardstock that has the actual stencil on it
• Watercolor paper for the background of the card (the sky)
• Off white base card
• Pigma Micron pen in Black, # 01 (or whatever size fits through your stencil)
• Various glitters & adhesives
• Ranger Stickles in Rainbow, Diamond, Crystal & Star Dust
• Distress Paints in Chipped Sapphire, Pickett Fence & Pewter
• Distress Ink in Black Soot
• Santa Stamp from Just For Fun
• Ranger Archival Ink in Jet Black
• Craft Sheet
• Water Spritzer 

After your houses dry, put the stencil back over them and outline them with the Micron pen.  Measure your houses so they fit the card size you are using (I always use A2 size, which is 4 ¼ x 5 ½, unless otherwise specified), I had to cut a house or 2 off but I saved them to use them later. Trim your houses as needed and add the glitter and Stickles to simulate snow.  I used Crystal Stickles on the bottom and Jones Tones glitter on the roof.  Set aside.

Using your craft sheet, dab a few dabs of the Chipped Sapphire & then tap the Black Soot Ink pad near it (I don’t have Black Soot paint, so I am using my ink pad – lovely how all the Distress products work together), spritz it with water and paint it on your watercolor paper (I always make my background paper a bit bigger than I need it because there is going to be a part that I will want to cut off).  The goal here was to make the sky look like night.  Once I was happy with the color, I used some Pewter paint and brushed it over the sky, lightly, to give it a nice bit of sparkle. Once that was dry, trim your background paper to fit your base card, I left a border around mine, but it’s up to you. Next, figure out where you want your Santa to go.  Since the sky was so dark, I took a wee bit of Pickett Fence and made an oval so you’d be able to see Santa better. 

I stamped my Santa with the Jet Black ink and glued my night sky and my houses to the base card.  I had these awesome star stickers so I used a few of those and a moon sticker as well.  Then to add more sparkle I put little random dots of Stickles all around the sky.  The card looks much better in person; you know how hard it is to capture sparkle on a picture.

I am sharing both photos because I think each one shows a different view of the card.  The image on the top shows a lighter version of the card which I think helps you see the different colors I used in the night sky and the image on the bottom is actually closer to what the card looks like in person. 

I hope you enjoyed my "Win" card - I try to use every scrap of my craft supplies and I am proud of myself that I didn't just toss this in the trash (I still have the failed red & green print paper, too!)

                                   

PS: If you'd like to see either of the photos larger, just click on the image.  This works on every photo on my blog (for some reason when I made the photos larger I ended up with a huge space between my text - I am still new at this blogging thing and the only way I could fix that space was make the pictures small)

 

I hope you enjoyed my little card and hopefully you won't look at your fails so harshly - there is always something you can make with your mistakes ~ Have a glorious holiday season!

I would like to enter my card in the following challenges:

One Crazy Stamper -  Winter/Holiday Challenge
The Artistic Stamper - December Challenge Anything Goes
Make My Monday - A Frosty Theme
The Cheerful Stamp Pad - Challenge #75, Signs of Christmas