On Failure

Tomorrow I’ll be joining a few friends in a fun collaboration centered around one theme: Pantone’s 2013 Color of the Year, Emerald.  When we planned the collaboration, I had grand plans for a fantastic DIY art piece for our master bedroom.  It was inspired by the Starbucks gift card I got for my BFF, which happened to be designed by the fashion house Rodarte:

Don’t the colors remind you of my signature style board?  Neutrals with a pop of fresh green.  Well, I planned to incorporate Emerald into a collage of neutral toned squares that had been lovingly Mod Podged onto a large piece of canvas.  It was going to be stunning!

Whomp, whomp.

While I have no excuses for such a miserable fail, I’ll tell you that I hastily put it together during Bee’s naptime as Noodle chattered on in the background.  She doesn’t nap anymore, and we’re working on her constant need for my help during her ‘quiet time’ activities.  So while trying to balance an inquisitive Noodle, I slapped paper squares onto my canvas and actually thought it looked pretty great.

Until it dried, and it looked like this:

I had even taken shots for my ‘tutorial’.

My first thought was it was still usable.  I’d photograph it for the blog and fix the imperfections later.

Wait, what?

Well, I could photograph it from camera angles like this:

or this:

Doesn’t it look so artsy?

Almost… pretty.

But step back, and you still have this:

Glue marks.  Gaps.  Glitter paper, oh my.

There were a few parts I thought looked good, like this textured silver paper.

Which doesn’t make up for the fact that 9/10ths was a total “preschool art project looking” disaster.  Try as I might, I couldn’t get over the fact that this wasn’t something I’d hang in my home.  I wouldn’t hang it in the garage, for that matter.  So why on earth would it be okay to pretend it worked for the blog?

Because there’s so much beauty out there, in blog land.  There’s so much pressure to get pinned, or to share the next big thing, and make our homes look gorgeous when really they look like this:

Trust me, I have waaaaaay worse photos but I just transferred over to a new computer and my pics have yet to follow.  They WILL be forthcoming.

I did think about creating a new Emerald project in time for the collaboration, but as I type this my husband just so happens to be on a plane flying home from a business trip in India.  It’s been a, um, busy week here?  Let’s call it an all-hands-on-deck, let’s-just-get-through-this, treading-water type of week.

Certainly no time to fix my failure, which leads me to sharing it here today in all it’s wonky glory.

Tomorrow I’ll be joining my friends in an Emerald inspired post.  It’s a post I love, one that reflects my style.  It won’t, however, have an art project attached to it.

I know you’ll forgive me, and hopefully embrace my failure and perhaps share one of your own.  I believe we all have failures, big and small.  I’m not going to pretend this was a big failure– it was a few hours of my time, and a $10 canvas I can most likely reuse.  This is a small failure, and I hope sharing it on the internet gives me the courage to share the bigger ones too.

Who knew?  In failure, I found freedom.

Whomp, whomp.

Have you had a DIY project go wrong?  Or a craft, a blog post, or something in your home?  Is there a failure of any kind you could share?  Let’s unburden ourselves and let go of perfection together!

Hi, I’m Carrie.  And sometimes I’m a failure.  😉