“Can you recover from scrapbooking mistakes,” Joan asked, “as I always make mistakes when I’m scrapbooking.”
On a recent scrapbook layout, Ellie said, “Something just wasn’t right. The page was too busy, but there was something else I couldn’t quite put my finger on.”
It was the following day when she realized she’d strayed from her original idea and the title no longer reflected what her layout had become.
“I got confused,” she said, “because whenever I looked at the photo, the title I originally chose always came to mind, but as I worked on the layout the focus changed. I’d chosen lots of word fragments about the person in the photo rather than what was happening, so I needed a new title.”
On top of everything else, it had been difficult fitting the title on the page, so it wasn’t a good layout. “Tough – can’t do anything about it now,” she thought. “Another one for the garbage.”
However, Ellie was reluctant to do that, as she liked the general idea, but with eighteen alphabet tiles all individually stuck down and several brads through the card, could it be salvaged?
It’s never easy to recover from mistakes, but she decided to try.
So Ellie took her X-acto knife and keeping it at as shallow an angle as possible, she very carefully began to slide it back and forth between the sticky tape and the cardstock … The first one came off!
“As the title was along the top with little else there, I’d decided to add a border if I couldn’t remove the alphabet tiles without damaging the surface of the cardstock,” Ellie said. “But when the first one came free without damage, and then another and another, my hopes rose. And I’m delighted to say that with careful work and great patience I got them all off.
“Then using my bone folder and working on the back of the cardstock, I carefully smoothed over the holes made by the brads, until they were only visible upon very, very close inspection.”
When discussing it afterwards we decided this has probably only been successful because Ellie was working on card and not paper, which was stronger; there was no pattern to be disturbed; and she was quick to work on the mistake. If she had left if for a few days the adhesive would have been more difficult to remove.
So, the moral of the story? It’s always worth a try to recover from your scrapbooking mistakes. Tell us below how you’ve succeeded when faced with mistakes in your work.
[tags]scrapbooking, scrapbooking layouts, Tips n Snips[/tags]
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