What We in the Business Call a Craft Fail

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The Internet is full of lies.

We sanitize our Facebook and Twitter posts to show only the smiling faces, the victories, the highlights.

Of course we want to focus on and share the good stuff. No one wants to be friends — even just Facebook friends — with someone who complains and is negative all the time.

But I fear this glorified view of other people’s lives makes us expect perfection in our own. We compare our slog through life’s drudgeries and disappointments against other people’s highlight reels, which is not a productive way of living.

Craft bloggers and others in what you might call the “lifestyle” genre can be particularly guilty of this. Not only do we only show the perfect finished products, we take photos of our homes that make them look perfect, too. (News flash: they’re not.)

With all that in mind I thought I’d share a project that didn’t go so well.

On Friday the Internet was mysteriously not working in my office, so I spent the afternoon working on a guest posting project I’ve been needing to devote some time to. It involves Perler beads, those little plastic beads you put on a peg board and melt with an iron to form different shapes.

I’ll show you the finished product when it’s done, but today I want to share this.

This is what happens when a Perler shape gets stuck to your iron and you don’t notice for a while. I had been ironing a different piece and a few minutes later I was looking at what I’d done and I thought to myself, “didn’t I have a green square?”

I looked around and suddenly realized it was stuck to the iron.

I briefly contemplated taking a picture of that before I tried to remove it, but I didn’t happen to have a camera handy so you’ll just have to imagine.

Should you ever need to remove Perler beads from the surface of a hot iron, here’s what worked for me.

Turn the iron off.
Pull off as much as you can in one piece. The beads are fused together, so this shouldn’t be too hard.
If the beads are stuck, grab a thin spatula to scrape them off.
Use a paper towel to wipe/scrape any remaining residue off the iron and the spatula.
Share your mistake with the world. It will make us all feel better.

Have you had any spectacular craft fails lately? We’d all love to hear about them.

This post was shared at Made by You Monday at Skip to My Lou and Craft-o-Maniac Monday. Check them out for some projects that turned out properly.