By Cheryl HorvathKnowing when to scrap a project and start over versus spending the extra time in trying to fix a mistake is a constant struggle for me. Especially in cases where there is quite a lot of effort put into the project leading up to the dreaded mistake or design flaw.
For example, the image below shows a couple of practice cards where I was playing with the layout and how I wanted the card designed. If you are familiar with the masking technique, you already know that it can be a bit tedious and planning is super important. You have to know which images to mask off and when before you stamp and so I took a few minutes to practice on a few cards before I settled on my final design which is the colored panel in the below image.
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You can see from the practice panels on one of the examples I hand lettered in the individual letters for the A, B & C. This is because I don’t own any letter stamps that would have worked here so I figured I could just hand draw them in. Then I decided to use a smaller letter and number stamp set which I found in my stash.
I went on to finish all the coloring and now that my card is mounted and set onto a card base, I ended up really not liking how that turned out, AT.ALL. The letters on the blocks were flat (no depth), not crisply stamped, and when I tried to fix with a black marker, I think I just made it worse. (Note to self: Burning the might night oil on a new baby card design that is due the next morning was not the best idea…)
After staring at it from several different angles and feeling tired from working all day and needed to get to bed, I thought to myself, Cheryl, you are your own worst critic – it is totally fine…just leave it. I shut out the light and went to bed feeling uneasy about the card that I was to take to work tomorrow for everyone in the office to sign.
Fast foward to 8am the next day…I’m just collecting my things and getting ready for work and I sit down and look at this card and think to myself…uggh…Cheryl you cannot use this card…you just can’t. It’s awful. Then it hits me. I don’t have a letter stamp set that would work for this but I do have a Cricuit! I quickly loaded up the cruicut design space and created the letters which I then had cut on my Criquit in no time at all. The question now, is how do I fix this mess without starting over…or do I just start over?
What would you have done? I’m just curious to know…would love for you to leave me a comment below.
Well…I did not start over. 🙂 I attempted to color the front of the blocks in the color as the other sides but clearly that didn’t work.
Then, I went with my only option which was to use my Black 100 copic marker and I completely filled in the face of each block covering up the stamping I had done previously. It kind of looks like it has a chalk board feel to it which I liked. Here is “v2” of my baby card and I have to say I’m pleasantly surprised at my patch job on this. It’s not my finest work by any means, but I think I salvaged it and feel good about sending this one along to my coworker. I did, however, work out that I could have probably made two more cards in the time I spent laboring over what to do with this mess on the first card, how to fix it and then fixing it. Bottom line, do what you need to do to be proud of your work and not cut corners…and if you can help it, don’t wait until the last minute to produce a promised card! 😉
