December 3, 2021
Oops
When Crafts Don’t Go as Planned
My mother turned 85 this week. She lives 800 miles away, so I wanted to make her a special card. I searched through designs for my digital die-cutting machine (a Cricut) and found a lovely pattern with a 3-D pop-up bouquet of flowers.
The project contained 13 illustrated steps. I aimed for the final photograph shown here. My masterpiece ended up with a little more character.
Step 1. Cut the shapes.
I loaded paper into my machine and started cutting. Oops. I forgot to adjust one of the settings, so I had to recut the flowers.
I placed all the pieces in a neat little stack.
Step 2. Glue the light purple flower pieces to the front side of the green cutouts.
Oops. I shouldn’t have stacked the pieces – I no longer knew which were the fronts and which were the backs. It took me an extra five minutes to match the flowers to their stems. I put down some scrap paper to protect the table and glued the flowers onto their stems.
Step 3. Slide the two main green pieces together along the first slits.
Huh? Which of the six green pieces were the “main pieces”? What does “first slit” mean? The one on the left? Oops. That didn’t work.
And on it went. Every single step involved at least one oops. I continued fighting through my mistakes as I inched my way forward.
The flower assembling challenged me beyond my abilities. After 30 minutes of struggle, I still had only four of the six pieces interlocked. Being a resourceful person, I knew what to do next. I woke my husband up from his Saturday morning sleep-in routine and begged him to help me. That was probably an oops, too. But your Mom only turns 85 once, you know.
Thirty minutes later, we had succeeded in accidentally smashing most of the leaves and mutually commiserating on the poor instructions. However, we were still no closer to assembling the pieces in a way that allowed us to open and close the card. I searched online and regained my hope when I found a video demonstrating the steps. It took another four or five oops plus another 30 minutes before I finally figured out how to do it. Unfortunately, all the pieces were a bit bent by this time (oops), but I knew my mother wouldn’t mind, so I pressed on.
I wrote “Happy 85th Birthday” on the card. As you can see in this picture, when I glued down the dark purple ribbon, my greeting changed into “Happy rthday.” Oops.
Then I tried to close the card, but the scrap paper below stuck to the front of the card.
Apparently, I failed to heed the warning in Step 10.
Step 10. Avoid putting glue where it would be visible on the front of the card with the flower cutout.
Oops. My sticky tape runner glue was exposed through the rose cutout on the front of the card. I managed to separate the card from the junk paper with minor damage, but I still had two problems.
First, I didn’t center the bouquet, so the card wouldn’t fold neatly in half (notice the crooked bottom right corner.) Well, that just proved it was homemade, I decided.
The second problem was worse. The type of glue tape I used stays sticky for days. So the open spaces in the rose were going to stick to the envelope when I mailed it. My mother would have to tear the card to pieces to remove it from the envelope.
I looked at my mess and said, “Oops,” one more time.
At this point, I had two choices.
Choice 1: Drive to the store and buy a card.
Choice 2: Start over.
Having already announced that Saturday’s primary jobs would be house cleaning and Christmas decorating, it is probably not surprising that my husband encouraged me to select Choice 2. I pulled out new paper and started over.
My second attempt proved much more successful, so I put the finished card in the mail.
A few days later, I received the following text from my mother:
Thank you for the beautiful card. It must have taken you hours to make it. I will keep it forever.
I laughed. I was as proud and happy as a kindergartener presenting Mommy with her first Mother’s Day card.
I’m always looking for life lessons, so here are a couple takeaways:
Lesson #1: Most of the time, let the little oopsies go. Don’t set expectations too high. Let others offer you grace. It’s a gift they probably enjoy giving to you, and you shouldn’t steal all their opportunities by being too perfect.
Lesson #2: Sometimes, you just have to start over. Why waste all those lessons you learned the hard way? Now that you know better, try again.
So if klutzy fingers send your favorite ornament to the ground in a thousand tiny pieces, oops. Pick up your second favorite ornament. If your Christmas pie comes out of the oven looking like a briquette, oops. Start a new tradition and make ice cream sundaes.
On the other hand, if you have the time and the inclination, don’t be afraid of do-overs. And think of it this way – it adds one more fun story to a lifetime of oopsies and overcomings.
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