No Mistakes!

A friend, and fellow SU demonstrator in my local demonstrator group has a saying that I love "There are no mistakes in stamping!" And she's right. I've learned that as I have an "oops" that I can simply modify my original design, or there are a number of ways that I can try to fix things if they didn't come out exactly how I had planned.

Normally I'm not a fan of showing my "oopses" but I thought it would be fun to show you how I recovered from this one and came up with something I really love instead! I apologize, this is a long one, but I wanted to show you my full process today.

Today I sat down with my watercolor brushes, reinkers and my new set "Thoroughly Thankful." I wanted to use the large square image for a scrapbook spread I've been working on.

First, I stamped the image with Stazon timber brown onto Confetti White cardstock. Then I put drops of reinker into a little tray I had picked up at the craft store over the weekend. I selected Old Olive, Pumpkin Pie, Creamy Caramel and Ruby Red for this project.

Personally, I found the teeny leaves too difficult to work with, I'm so embarrased to show you this picture, its awful! But, I liked how the pumpkins had come out, and I knew that with a little imagination I could salvage the piece and end up with something I was happy with.


I also had gone WAY too dark with the old olive on the bottom little leaf, and it was a smudgy mess!

First, to fix the icky small leaves, I remembered that I had seen the sentiment "Thankful Thoughts" added onto the block in the Idea Book and catalogue and got out my paper trimmer. I added an old olive mat and stamped the sentiment on a piece of confetti white. A little adhesive, and bang, those blah leaves were covered over! Nice.

Then, to cover the dark, smudgy leaf. I stamped that portion of the block again onto confetti white and trimmed it out just around the border with my snips. Then, I pulled my So Saffron ink pad out, pulled a speck of ink off the inside of the lid with my fine watercolor brush, and filled in that leaf. I also added a dab of so Saffron to both the solid brown leaf and the green leaf just above now yellow leaf to brighten them up a little bit and add a few highlights.

When I adhered the revised yellow leaf back to the rest of the completed image, I also flipped its orientation so it points the other way. While I was at it, I filled in my sunflower petals with So Saffron ink too! I added a dab of white gel pen to the left hand side of the apple for a little shine, and darkened the right hand side with a little bit of Purely Pomegranate ink.

Then, when it came down to it, I decided to not to use this as a part of the scrapbook page anyways. I wanted to make it into a card. Grabbed for a piece of Old Olive and the Fall Flowers Designer Paper from Stampin Up that I just love so much. I faux stitched around the Old Olive mat with the help of my handy dandy paper piercer and mat pack, then used a white gel pen for faux stitching between the pierces.

With this big image, a square card was needed. This is a 5 1/4 square with a mat of the Fall Flowers designer paper measuring 5" square. My horizontal slot punch was used to get the ribbon just around the right hand side of the card.

Still felt a little naked to me, so I added three antique brads to the bottom right hand corner, again courtesty of my mat pack and paper piercer.

Not originally what I had planned with this stamp set today, but its a keeper anyways. So, the next time you have a "whoops" take another look and see what you can do. Like my friend Barbara says "There are NO mistakes in stamping."