Blogging // Failed Projects

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Blogging Project DIY Failures

Ya know, sometimes in the DIY world things just plain don’t work out. We’ve all been there, right?! You have this beautiful vision in your head about what you’re going to create and when you’re done it ends up looking like something your dog dragged through the dirt and left on your doorstep. It happens! Today I thought I’d share my latest fail, just to keep it real and acknowledge the fact that it ain’t always pretty around here, folks.

A few months back I bought about a jillion tiny wooden beads, with the intention to make a really killer beaded curtain for a doorway. It was gonna be rad. It was gonna be all painted and designy and super cool. And then I got all the beads in the mail and I sat back and looked at the project and I was like YEESH this is going to take me until the end of the year. So I put that on hold because lord knows I didn’t have time to string a thousand beads onto twine with a baby running around the house.

So then, I downsized the project. I had this great idea — a beaded wall hanging, a couple of feet square, in the shape of a heart. I figured, how hard could it be to just put some beads on a few strings of twine and organize it all so that it hangs perfectly in the shape of a heart? It’ll be so cool! So I stayed up one night stringing beads until my eyes were crossed and I got them all together in (what I thought was) the right shape while the project was laying down on the floor. And then I picked it up and it looked like a sad kidney. Gah.

Attempt number three: call in the big guns (A.K.A. Mr. Lovely). My husband is so great with precision stuff and I figured if anybody could get this blob to look like a heart, it was gonna be him. So the next night we tackled it together. We restrung, remeasured, retied all the knots for hours. And then we picked it up and it looked like a slightly less sad kidney. Attempt number four: we redid the whole thing again while it was hanging up. And here was the result:

Failed Blog Projects

Not exactly an ideal heart shape, huh? After this round I just scrapped it. It’s waiting in the closet for another day when I can either decide to devote more time to it or when I can bear to repurpose it into another project. I can’t even tell you how many hours are in this lopsided, weird, misguided project. Eventually I’d still love to make it work well enough to provide specific directions for you all to put it together. But for now, we’re stepping away from it.

When I’m in the middle of a project and I can see it going south there’s always a point where I have to decide to push through and try to make it work or just scrap it and move on to the next idea. And I’m sure you’ve all been there too! There’s a lot involved — how badly you want or need to complete your project, the time you have to invest, pride at whether you can figure the dang thing out. When you find yourself in the midst of something that’s not going well, how do you react? Do you get mad? Do you just laugh maniacally? I tend to kind of fall on the floor and just lay there until I think of a solution. (Completely true, no exaggeration; we put a carpet in our studio because we lay on the floor while we ponder things.)

And if you have a magnificent fail that you just have to get off your chest, leave a comment! I need my blob heart to have a little company in the pile of discarded projects. xoxo

P.S. Get lost in our Blogging archives right here!

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5 Comments

  1. I’m a knitter, and a few years ago I made a knitted stegosaurus for a friend’s baby. The knitting went fine, but putting it together was a nightmare. It ended up turning out ok, but I re-sewed and re-stuffed so many times … At one point I was just sitting on my living room floor swearing at it. Lol. That’s how I handle crafty projects gone awry – loud, over-dramatic and with sweat words. Ha.

  2. Oh sweet little heart…. maybe it just needs some weight at the bottom to keep all the strings going straight? And kudos to you for giving it three tries!!

  3. Oh goodness, I’ve had so many failed projects!
    The biggest commitment was probably when I had the brilliant idea of making a no-sew tulle skirt, but one that looked store bought and that you could actually wear out. After about 4 nights of working on it, 3 bottles of fabric glue, and a giant pile of tulle I realized there was no way my “no-sew” plan was going to turn into something wearable. And now the remnants of that project sit in a craft bin until I figure out what to do with all that tulle 😉

  4. Thank you so much for sharing a fail story! I am thinking about starting a craft/DIY blog but sometimes things just don’t turn out the way I hope. And wasn’t sure if it was acceptable to share a failed project.