Scrapbooking screw-ups

My post the other day made me think of my biggest scrapbooking mishaps, so I thought I'd share them with you.

If you've scrapped with me before, you know my mantra: There are no mistakes in scrapbooking, only unplanned opportunities for creativity. Heaven knows I've had plenty of chances to put that mantra into practice. Here's some of those moments:

1. Torn paper after moving stickers. Most recently, I lifted stickers after I'd adhered them and they slightly tore the paper. Confession: I do this all the time. I'm the only person in the world that's happy when Thickers don't adhere well.

 

I don't think anyone will notice. Except maybe me, but in a few years, even I'll forget.

2. Mystery Goo. I made this layout for Sketch Support, then when I went to photograph it a day later, I noticed Mystery Goo. It had ruined some photos and splattered on the background. NO CLUE what happened, though I wonder if my younger boy had sprayed a lot of leave in conditioner in his hair, thinking it was hair spray and then Dripped. I replaced the photos, but was in turmoil about the  other splatters until Lisa Truesdell on Studio Calico suggested I spray the whole page with Mister Huey Shine, which is now at Archivers. Very nice solution! Pun intended.

3. Messed up embossing. Right now I love to stamp and emboss, but I tend to make a mistake with the stamping so that the image takes less ink and therefore less embossing powder, thereby being Screwed up. Here's an example:

I did this page for Twelve, commemorating a Thing, in this case my iPhone. I thought the bullseye stamps and more particularly the words would express my affection well. They did, but I stamped AFTER I'd adhered the dimensional accents. I hit them when stamping, meaning less ink, meaning no embossing powder on parts of the image.

X%&#!

I used a Zig pen to fill in where there was no powder.

4. Water on a layout. This was a big oops that was totally not my fault, aside from the fact that I gave birth to the culprit. I blogged about it on this post, and I did repair the page well, but let's just say I'm VERY sensitive about my sons touching anything with water near my pages.

5. Mist oops. If you mist, you will have to deal with oops. In this case, I messed up one project on a page I was making. I loved the paper, and I had two pieces, so I did it again and saved the mistake. I used the mistake on this layout, covering most of the misting. Covering is a good way to deal with mistakes. (If you're curious, the misting oops involved too intense color.)

6. Stitching screw-up. I like to stitch around the exterior of a page, especially if the exterior looks white and empty. I tried that here, but I must have wound my bobbin badly, for the stitching had poor tension: some stitches had wide loops showing up above the page. On top of it all, I ran out of bobbin thread and didn't notice for half a page. To fix it, I ripped some stitches, pulled threads tight and taped  it on the back, then stitched again and again to mask the irregularity. When it looks bad, make it look like you did that on purpose. :-) Be whimsical.

7. Crushed paper. This was a rarity. I scrap in my living room, in an easy chair, on a lap desk. I keep my projects there in progress. Miraculously, my boys have never messed up a page, barring the water mess up. My pets haven't either, except some supplies that disappeared recently that I think my dog ate. The biggest page mess up happened because of me. I tripped over the dog, fell on the page, and crushed the background paper.

What could I do? Nothing, really, because the paper was ruined, so I removed the photos. (Helpful hint: when you need to remove photos from a page, flip the page and pull the page off the photos. You'll save the photos and probably save a lot of the background paper too. If you remove the photo from the page, you'll bend them and ruin them.)

I then replaced the ruined paper with another one, and truth be told, I liked it better. Here it is:

I hope you click on the layout and read the journaling, if you can. My mother-in-law was an amazing woman, and an incredible artist. She studied photography with Ansel Adams. I am so glad I had the chance to interview her about this before she died. That interview was definitely NOT a mistake, so I invite you to interview an older relative about something you know a little about but should know more about.