Sunday, March 29, 2009

When Crafts Go Bad

I thought I would take this opportunity to get real. I've looked at hundreds of great blogs written by extremely talented people showing off their best work. But what about the projects that go wrong? The gorgeous skirt that just didn't work out right or the gourmet brownies that burned on the edges and stuck to the pan? Seems those never make the cut. Not only do they die a painful death somewhere during the creative process but they never receive the honor of being blogged about. Well that's all about to change. I'm going to break the stepford-like tradition of blogging and write about a project gone bad.

I started out with this cute and campy pair of fuzzy toe socks that someone gave my daughter as a gift a while back. My daughter isn't able to wear toe socks and was pretty bummed. I decided I'd cheer her up and surprise her by refashioning them into something cool. But what would it be? I thought maybe a pair of regular socks; but that wasn't inventive enough. Then it hit me, arm warmers. Something fun and colorful she could wear with a short-sleeved tshirt during the winter - her arms would be warm in style. Maybe it would even start a fashion trend, I thought confidently. So I started into it, figuring I'd catalog this great moment in fabric refashioning through photographs. Surely this project would be post-worthy!

Sadly, it was not, something went horribly wrong. The fabric wouldn't cooperate, the seams were all lumpy and awful. I ended up having to trim into the cute little froggy's face in an attempt to fix the lumpy seams. The result was misshapen and awful. I wish I had allowed myself enough room at the time to be okay with my failed project. I should have given myself credit for trying and chocked it up to lessons learned. But I was upset that I flubbed it. I finally just had to scrap them. Try as I might to save them from the landfill, that's where they ended up. I took my daughter shopping and let her pick out a cute pair of socks which made her happy. The moral here is live, learn and keep it real. To everyone out there who has made a crafty faux pas, know that you are not alone. There's room in the blogosphere for that much honesty. Besides, it made for two fun photos and a confessional blog post so I guess it wasn't all bad.

6 comments:

  1. very creative blog post, leslie...
    refreshing honesty. love it!

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  2. I'd love to see more of this talked about in craft land... thanks for sharing your project gone wrong.

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  3. Great post. People learn from mistakes - they are a great teaching tool.

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  4. Well - at least you tried! Thanks so much for stopping by - so glad we found you on twitter!
    Karla & Karrie

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  5. I think we can all identify with this! I have also started photographing what I thought was going to be a wonderful tut - but it was different in my head to what it turned out to be in real life!

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  6. Thanks for all your great comments. Seems we've all been there :-)

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