Crafting Fails!

That’s right, failure is the topic of the day and I am about to share with you some of the posts that did not work out so well.

As I have said, I like to experiment. I am not a chef, nor a professional crafter, and I am not a mother with 20 years of experience in all things DIY. I just enjoy making things and sharing what I make with all of you.

That being said, my projects do not always come together as I hope. And I believe that even the professionals have these failures. So let me share some of the post ideas that failed. I am still working on them, I have not given up. But for now here they rest in the pile of my failures.

*Note: I am not upset about these failures. I still had fun while making them and I find the odd failure kind of funny. Life is no fun if you cannot laugh at your own mistakes!

Fail #1: Cork and Fabric Mousepad

So I have been tinkering with this one for a while. I wanted to make some more office décor and needed a new mousepad since mine is cracking. So I found tutorials for cork based mousepads. Many of them required materials I did not have though. So I crafted one with just cork, fabric, and white craft glue.

BAM! Does it not look beautiful? I mean it technically did work. This is a failure because the top of the mousepad is scratchy due to the way the fabric and glue came together. A rough surface will cause issues with your mouse and its movements which is never good. So until I find a way to smooth the surface, the mousepad is a fail.

Fail #2: Button Mending

I announced on Twitter two weeks ago that I would post a button mending tutorial. I had mended all the loose and missing buttons in my house, taken lots of pictures, wrote the post, but when I went to edit the pictures…they were all blurry.

You see, right now I am working with just a regular digital camera. The screen is quite pixelated and what I see does not always translate to the finished picture. So I ended up with photos like this:

Not so great when you are trying to explain what is going on with a thread and needle that you can barely make out. But this happens. Until I improve my photography and/or get a new camera, failure due to photos will likely happen again. So another one for the fail pile.

Fail #3: Grocery Bag Dispenser

I was so excited for this DIY. My roommates and I hold onto the plastic grocery bags we get and use them for trash bags. Before, we had nowhere to store them so we just made a “bag of bags” under the kitchen counter. This works fine but does not look very nice so I wanted to make a dispenser to hold them in.

So I grabbed one of my favorite crafting materials, a shoebox, and went to work. The idea in my head was to link together the bags and place them in the box with a hole in the top so that is like a continuous feed of bags. Almost like pulling out tissues or cleaning wipes.

In reality, the box ended up with a terrible paint job. And the way I connected the bags made it hard to separate. So I count the project as a fail, though I did keep the box so that the bags are nicely contained. I will probably have another go at some kind of storage technique for them in the future (maybe when I am in my new apartment) but for now: fail.

I have had plenty of other failed experiments and I am bound to have plenty more.
If you guys are interested I will share my food fails but for now,
please comment below and tell me I am not the only one with a fail list!