We have all been there… the moment when you are putting the finishing touch on a project and you sneeze or flinch and smudge a line. I had one of these moments the other night. I had decided to make up a little watercolor card for a wedding I was attending this weekend. Being a novice to watercolors, I thought I would test my limits with black lettering in the form of a monogram.
A mistake was made!
I started in the middle. Worked to the right and then went back in to add the first letter before waiting for the paint to dry completely…
I panicked. I saw my life flash before my eyes (ok, maybe not that bad… but my heart sank). It was 11pm the night before we were leaving for the event and I had just spent hours painting beautiful flowers into a wreath on this card. I was NOT starting over. My initial reaction was to cover up the mistake with a cutout piece of paper, but was afraid it would look like I was doing just that. Covering up a mistake.
As I was brainstorming ideas to make this look intentional, I remembered a really posh wedding invitation I was sent that had gold-rimmed cardstock. I remembered thinking it was relatively “extra” at the time, but admitted it made the simple paper stand out. So I did a test on a tiny square of paper with gold nail polish and thought it looked pretty good. I tried again with the black lettering on the little piece and l held it up to the card. Now we were working with something. Naturally I couldn’t stop there, so I gold rimmed the entire card. Go big or go home, right? I will tell you, it took the project to a whole other level. Honestly, the picture doesn’t do it justice. I hope the recipients keep this card on their mantle for all of time.
I will now gold rim all of the things.
This outcome got me thinking about mistakes. I know you learn from them, but I never really thought about using them to your advantage in a creative setting. It if wasn’t for the little mistake, I wouldn’t have come up with a solution that ended up taking the card to the next level. There will be projects that cant be saved by gold nail polish (although I will likely try applying this technique to future mistakes because… gold rimmed, am I right?), but I look forward to challenging myself to continue finding creative solutions to problems that not only fix, but enhance a project.
For anyone who is curious, Martha Stewart watercolor brush pens and inexpensive “dry pan” style watercolors on Strathmore watercolor cold press paper were used.
~Sarah