My friend Grace is a die-hard quilter. Her work and the work of her compadres is beautiful, and every project seems to come out a masterpiece. “Don’t you ever make a mistake?” I asked her. “Sure we do. We just put a butterfly on it,” she answered. I looked at her with no understanding whatsoever. She went on to explain that they weren’t necessarily mistakes, but occasions for butterflies. Her appliqués were often not planned, but cover-ups! The same rule applies in scrapbooking. They’re not mistakes, they’re opportunities.
In the example here, I screwed up the title. I tried to letter it by hand and it just looked ugly. My letters were clunky and uneven. I’d already put a lot of work into the page and didn’t want to start over, especially since I liked the way it had turned out. I didn’t think I could cover it with paper and maintain the design of the page (it’s a red cross for my son’s BSA CPR/First Aid page). To cover it in white cardstock would have made the mistake pretty obvious. Instead, I covered over the ugly lettering with a piece of heavy white gauze, which was very fitting for a first aid page.
For the letters, I’d found some stamped Velcro awhile back at a thrift store, and knew that for the price of a quarter, I’d eventually find a use for them. The red background was perfect, and because they’re Velcro, they stand up from the white fabric. Adding in a textured frame and letters turned out to give the page much more pop than it had with my original ugly lettering. Only I (and now you…shhhh) know that it wasn’t planned. It’s the scrapbooking version of the butterfly.
It’s one more reason I love scrapbooking. It’s not about perfection, it’s about the people we love.