Pinterest Unfailed - The Wedding Card Experiment

First - I have readers!!! Okay, now that's out of the way.

Pinterest.  I have had a love/hate relationship with Pinterest since I got engaged.  Everyone is all about DIY these days and while that's great for some, I have very few creative bones in my body.  What I have even less of is time.  During wedding planning, Pinterest also had idea overload - I would decide on a "theme" or "look" and then I would find something else I liked more! Eventually, I stopped looking at Pinterest.  I created a board and gave permission to my Maid and Matron of Honors to pin what they thought I could use. I only looked at that board and I was able to keep my sanity and get some really great ideas.  Now that the wedding is over and I'm not on wedding overload, I've started using Pinterest again.  

What you tend to forget about Pinterest is that people blog their best work. And since that work is awesome and cute, people pin it.  Regular not super creative people (ahem - me) tend to forget that we aren't the creative geniuses that blog about our creativity all the time, that don't spend the majority of our time crafting..  We see these cute, deceptively simple  ideas and think "Hey! I can do that!"  Except, you can't.  Or you can, just not as easily as you may think.  

I'm sure you want to see my Pinterest fail.  And I'm happy to show you my fail.  But let's not put the cart before the horse.  

I have a card problem of the Hallmark variety.  I love cards.  True story - you could forget to give me a present and get me a really awesome card and I would be totally okay (this does not apply to my husband).  I also scrapbook, or I used to back in the day.  I am an only child and spent many summers and breaks trying to find things to keep me busy during the day.  One summer I found scrapbooking.  It was perfect for me - I could be creative, but I didn't have to draw, I could use things already created by others.  I loved it. Still do.  So, combine the two - cards and scrapbooking.  This means I have every card that we received during the wedding process and lots of other mementos as well.  

While on Pinterest, I found this craft project:

It's a way to make an album out of your wedding cards.  I thought, "Hey! I can do this!!" And so our story begins: How Sarah failed at Pinterest and then saved herself.

I started by gathering all my materials.  There were lots.  I kept cardboard like the post said.  I bought a big pack of card stock in our wedding colors because I knew I would use it for scrapbooking as well.  I bought a crop-a-dile, which is a hole punch on steroids.  And I bought a laminator.  "A laminator?" you might ask.  Why would Sarah need a laminator? Because I am an overachiever.  Since I had all my cards, I decided I would make dividers for each event, because I am awesome and was convinced I would beast this Pinterest project (I literally told myself that once - I will beast this!).  Problem one. I also bought loose leaf binder rings so I could make it into a book.  The projects I found only used one ring or thread.  But they weren't me.  They weren't beasting the project like I was. That would be problem two.

                        

My trustee laminator and cards. Yes, those cards are separated into bags by event. Don't judge.

All my cool tools. The green thing is my crop-a-dile aka hole punch on steroids.

So I start making everything. All my pieces.  I figured out where I was going to punch the two holes based on the size of my cards.  I measured the length of cardboard I would need based on where the punches would go. I then measured and glued card stock on the cardboard covers. I even covered the tops and sides because I am anal retentive like that. I made my dividers out of card stock that I laminated, so I measured all of those pieces and printed out titles for them.  While my hand writing is not serial-killer terrible, it's also not cute enough to forever memorialize in my Pinterest project.  Fonts and printers are my friends.  I laminated the pages and I started hole punching.  Up until this point, I was beasting this project. I was awesome.  I was NOT going to have a Pinterest fail. Nope, not this girl.

Awesome measuring at work.

  

Cutting perfectly straight lines with the craft knife (that I also cut myself with)

Then hole punching happened. It all went downhill from there.  

1. The cardboard for the covers was super thick. I could barely fit it into the crop-a-dile. I decided to hole punch the covers with just the side coverings, that way I could cover the indentations with the card stock. Turns out that I am not talented at re-creating perfectly positioned hole punches.  So I ended up with this.

You can see the indentations better on the purple one.  

                                     

2.  I decided to laminate the card stock for the front cover since I had letters and a photo.  It caused a bubble.  If I wouldn't allow a bubble on a divider, there was no way I was going to allow one on my front cover.  I peeled the front cover out of the laminate to save it.  Once saved, I tried, again, to position the hole punches.  I got one and failed on the second. At this point, I decided to save my sanity and just chop off the side with the holes.      

3. I started putting everything together on the two binder rings.  Amazingly, I didn't perfectly position the hole punches on the cards either, so the cards and covers weren't lying flat against each other.  I started trying to pull the rings to try and better position them.  Then this happened.

You can see where the holes are dug into the cardboard where I tried to "fix" the problem.

4. There might have been tears at this point. There might have been some cursing.  I also want to point out that at this point, I stopped taking photos.  Why? I manage federally funded grants. How can a Pinterest project defeat me?!? I was angry, I was over it and I was definitely not going to show the world how terrible it was! Aaron encouraged me to take a break and watch some Grey's Anatomy.  So I did.  And I had an epiphany - ribbon was MUCH more forgiving than metal rings.  So I went to work. 

Only ribbon can make these holes line up!

And tada!  It actually turned out really well and cute!

Lessons learned from this project:

1. My pinterest projects will not be flawless.  You can see the indentations from the crop-a-dile. Some cards have four holes instead of two because I messed them up.  Everything doesn't line up perfectly. And it's okay.
2. "Easy-peasy" projects = 2 days of my time.
3. I am a masochist, I totally plan on trying something else.