MESSIN' UP THE PUMPKIN

May's Paper Pumpkin is a GUY KIT. That's great. Sometimes it's tough to come up with a good male card.

The guys focused on in the kit are "Bro", "Dad" and "Son". And you have the options to send these guys either a birthday greeting or Father's Day wishes.

Well, my "Bro"-in-law was celebrating a birthday, and I wanted to make him a birthday card. When I saw this month's kit, it was ideal, so I went to work.

Since I don't think of him as "Bro", and he's definitely NOT my son OR my dad,  I opted to not use the little tags that were featured on the sample cards.

This kit is especially easy, and pretty much all the work is done for you. So, I set out to recreate this card, without the tag:

As you all know about me, it is pretty unusual for me to recreate a card as it is meant to be. Well, BEING ME, it turned out that I didn't after all.

Getting started:

I peeled the blue and green tags from their sheets, and placed them "just so" on the card base. The kit comes with a darling little Marina Mist Stampin' Spot. So, I stamped "Happy Birthday" on the precut dot-edged banner piece. Oh no! I did a lousy job of stamping. Now what?? 

Since the kit contained just the right number of pieces to create six cards, I was very hesitant to throw away my ruined piece. And I couldn't just flip it over and re-stamp it, because the other side was a plain white. 

I grabbed a scrap piece of Very Vanilla from my stash and stamped my sentiment once again. Whew. Good stamping job, Linda! The sentiment was then cut out with one of the Chalk Talk Framelits and the Big Shot. I finished off this piece by sponging Marina Mist around the edges. Stampin' Dimensionals popped it up just right so no one will ever know this was not what I intended. :>)

I must admit that I so loved the Candy Dots that came in the kit that I was bit stingy with them. I ended up using only three on my card compared to the four they used. That means I have an extra six to play with on a future project!

If you'll take notice of the one other mess-up I made: 

Remember (and this is what I get for not following directions), I adhered my blue and green tags first thing? Well, not good. Not good at all. I was supposed to have wound the Baker's Twine around the two tags BEFORE I adhered it to my card base. Uh oh. How to rectify this dire situation?

OK. Got it.

To mimic the banner with the sentiment, I got out my Bitty Banners Framelits and cut a smaller version from Very Vanilla cardstock. I then wrapped the Baker's Twine around that, sans the little label, and attached it to the top of the tags with two Stampin' Dimensionals. 

To balance the composition, I added one Candy Dot to the point of the green tag.

If I may say so myself, I think I turned my messes into happy accidents. What do you think?

Have you had the experience of cleaning up after yourself like I just did in this project? Were you satisfied with the end result? Did you turn a mess into a happy accident? 

Messy

Smiles.