Rescuing Ruined Cards

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Note: I am not sure how I managed it, but I apologize for the screwy font! Thought you might enjoy some tips and tricks I have compiled for rescuing projects you thought were toast... I am the queen of fixing mistakes because I am the queen of MAKING mistakes!

1. Easiest way to fix a mistake: SU cardstock is thicker than ordinary cardstock, so if you mess up on one side, you can flip it over and try again—it won’t bleed through.
2. If you’ve messed up when stamping on the front of a card made from colored cardstock, don’t throw it away! Cut it down the fold and use the two halves to create full sized mats for a plain white card, or use it to mat a picture for a scrapbook layout.
3. If you mess up when stamping the front of a card made from plain white cardstock, use it to stamp accents that you will later attach to a different card front with a colored mat.
4. When using white cardstock, you can use white-out to hide “ghosting” mistakes where the side of the stamp showed up next to the stamped image.
5. If the mess-up is along one edge, try using the tearing technique—no one will ever know you hadn’t planned it that way!
6. If the stamped image is off-centered: trim it if you can; cover with a matted image; put embellishments to one side  or the other to either balance it out or draw focus to it; turn it into a tag instead or a differently-sized card.
7. Repeatedly stamp over the mistake and cover the entire card front to use as a background.  This works well with word stamps.
8. If it is a sayings stamp that didn’t completely transfer, see if you can fill in the missing spots with a marker (in the same exact shade, of course!). Or, if you don’t have exactly the right shade, try to make it look like you did it on purpose and use several colors to fill it in. If using a black marker, make sure it is SU, or it will bleed if you try to use the blender pen, aqua-pen, or markers to color it in.
9. Along the same lines, if a stamp only partially inked, you can stamp again exactly over the same image if you have a Stamp-a-majigg.
10. On the Lovely As A Tree card pictured here, the center tree did not ink well when I stamped it. So I stamped it again on scrap cardstock, cut out just the center tree, matted it and raised it up on dimensionals for added focus. Awesome! (all products by SU--Night of Navy CS and ink, Lovely As A Tree and Warm Words stamp sets).
11. Dropped ink pad on project? Drop it repeatedly until it looks like you did it on purpose!
12. Smudged the corner of the card with a dirty finger? Wipe the card lightly over the ink pad to pick up interference ink—or use other aging and weathering techniques.
13. Wrinkled or bent cardstock—wrinkle, crumple or bend it more, then spray it lightly with water, smooth it out and let it dry. Make it look intentional!
14. Got adhesive on the card where you didn’t intend to? Use the inexpensive Adhesive Remover that works like an eraser to make the sticky stuff disappear.
15. Ended up with a “so-so” card? Try adding embellishments—ribbon, hemp, buttons or eyelets. Tear off the bottom or side edge. Trim the whole card down by ½ in inch on the top and side, and mat against a coordinating piece of cardstock. Use fancy scissors to trim around the whole card. Throw a little glitter or Crystal Effects at the focal point. Blind embossing can add a KA-POW of punch to a card without contributing to the busy-ness.
16. If all else fails, set it aside. You may have a brainstorm later and think of the perfect embellishment or technique to fix it up!

Comments

[Angela]

This is a great list!! Thanks for sharing!