A Happy Mistake

Have you ever sat down to create something, made a mistake, brainstormed a solution, and ended up with something even better?  That happened to me twice this past week during the Fiskateers Spring Stamp Out!  Interestingly, the two challenges were "Color Me Vibrant" (use only bright colors) and "In Black and White" (no colors at all).  Completely opposite challenges!

Here's my finished "Color Me Vibrant" card:

My original plan had the pink paper flush with the bottom and the sentiment at the intersection.  I stamped my sentiment with Versamark, then chalked over it with pink, orange and yellow.  There wasn't enough contrast, so I decided to fill in the words and outline the swirls with black pen.  BIG mistake.  Writing over chalk is not good for pens.  Not good at all.  I realized this after 2 seconds.  At that point I was committed, so I kept going until the pens completely and totally died.  This is what it looked like when the pens met their untimely demise:

 

A moment of silence for .05 and .005.  I will miss them.

I decided not to kill any more pens, which forced me in a different direction.  I punched the star, added the sentiment in black, stamped the whole thing with Versamark, then chalked over that.  A million times faster and easier with no ruined supplies.  Lesson learned!

I got a fun new wedding-themed stamp set from Layers of Color, so I decided to break it in for the "In Black and White" challenge.  First, I experimented with two embossing powders.  I stamped the image on the left with Versamark ink and then used black embossing powder.  For the image on the right, I used black ink and clear embossing powder.    

It was fun to see the difference.  They both look fine, but I thought the one on the right was more crisp and beautiful.  I matted it, then set it aside to do some background stamping.  When I was happy with the background, I picked up the embossed image and layered it on top.

What the heck is that smudge doing there?!  Rookie stamping mistake- not checking for inky fingers.  Aargh!

 I was pretty annoyed at myself... until I realized the mistake was an opportunity.  I dug through my goodies and found a bit of Prima sparkly black ribbon left over from the Flamingo Four challenge last June!  It was perfect!  I added a piece of Fancy Pants filter paper as the final touch.  Beautiful!   

The card looks much better with those two embellishments and I would never have thought to use them if I hadn't made that unsightly thumbprint.  Definitely a happy mistake!