Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Camouflaging the 'oops'

Last night was the Palouse Suzuki Strings Spring Concert. The children did a fabulous job and sounded so beautiful! I love the mellow sounds of strings, the high notes float out and linger poignantly in the air. The final piece was simply delightful, called 'Russian Fantasy.'
Bravo, PSS!

With only 15 minutes remaining before our departure from home, I needed to whip out a quick gift tag to coordinate with the frame we selected as a thank-you gift for DD2's lovely and oh-so-worthy teacher....Mrs. Diane Worthey. We thought Diane might enjoy one of my most popular designs, the dragonfly and vine. (I try to keep at least one item with this design on hand, as it seems to have high appeal for many different tastes.)


Anyway, I intended to just stamp a simple 'Thank You' sentiment in sage green with a small vine motif to echo the frame and call it good. Fast and easy. Right.

But as you know, I have confessed previously to my terrible stamping technique. And sure enough, ...I did it again. I got ugly stamp edges framing the sentiment in that awkward, obviously 'oops' fashion. Now what?

Thank goodness for cats-eye liquid chalks by Chalk Box! I grabbed the sage green and started dabbing and wiping. Soon you couldn't see those unsightly edges, but now I had another problem. All my pre-made paper filigree leaves are in sage tones; I needed some contrast. A Tim Holtz Distress ink pad in 'vintage photo' brown was laying nearby from another project, so the dabbing and swiping began again. With just a few minutes left, I popped down a dozen leaves in a vining pattern, and we ran out of the house with the glue still wet!

Could you have guessed that this was a major 'oops' in disguise? (my daughter snapped the photo enroute using her black skirt as background!)


It's not anything amazing, but I wanted to illustrate that mistakes can be covered in some pretty effective ways!




4 comments:

Suzanne said...

Let's try this again. For some reason Blogger is having comment hiccups this morning.

You've done a great job and both the frame and the card are just beautiful. What you probably don't know is the teacher's at your children's school are vying for the right to have your chidren in their class. It's like winning the teacher's gift lottery!

Suzanne

Paula B. said...

LOL - it's a nice thought, Suzanne, but I can guarantee that your conjecture is purely fantasy. I state this boldly because they only have one teacher, and I know her very intimately. That woman happens to be a very severe critic of my work.

(Did I forget to mention that we have been part of the growing home-education movement for the past 15 years?)

My younger sister sent a card to my kids one fall, telling them she heard they got "crabby ol' Mrs. Bauer" again that year -- you know how kids lament when they get the 'mean' teacher in school. We all hooted and hollered after reading that!

But your comment made me smile anyway. Maybe me, myself and I will have to duke it out over who gets the Bauer children next year. :)

Sonya said...

Paula,

I can see why everyone likes your vine frames! Great dragonfly! I was in Hobby Lobby yesterday and saw a brass embossing plate that had almost the same pattern on it and I really wanted to get it, but now I will just quill one! I love the way the leaves on your vine are not flat against the frame, I sometimes get dimensionally challenged when I do my projects and forget that the quilling shapes don't have to lie flat. Still so much to learn and remember! There goes that design thing again. lol. That just gives me another reason to quill as much as I can! Maybe you could add a short "design techniques" class to your list??? I know, it's one more thing.
Shalom,
Sonya

Paula B. said...

Sonya, thank you so much for the compliments and for the future class suggestion. I have actually been pondering the idea. It will come after we finish learning all the techniques, a sort of 'putting it all together' type of class.

Paper filigree is such a versatile medium, I really think most of us have only begun to scratch the surface of its vast creative possibilities!