By Sharon L. Shannon, Originally posted to The Crafty Bag Lady

It’s refreshing to find crafty gallows humor like Craft Fail. In the spirit of these True Confessions of creative attempts that should just never have been unleashed, here is where I spill on…ME! I now present three projects, each with potential in the conception phase, but woefully lacking in execution. (Hmmm…execution…gallows humor…pattern here?)

EXHIBIT A, Filed under “WTH”: Plastic bead that just ate it, but not before exacting bloody revenge

Who in the world could mess up recycled plastic beads? I mean, how easy-peasy can something get? I followed the instructions. Don’t ask me how, but I ended up with what appears to be a green inner ear bone. No, wait–it’s a deformed miniature coffee mug! No, wait–it’s The Leaning Tower of Teeny Tiny Plastic, with two micro-ropes attached to keep it from hitting the ground!

Okay…so I have no idea what it is, but it sure the heck is not a bead.

Being the optimist Queen of Denial I am, I thought Hmmmmm…maybe I could wear it as a funky ring! Yay! Cool idea, until I put it on my finger and promptly impaled myself with the sharp point inside. Yeeowch! As if that weren’t enough, I then realized I hadn’t even taken all the stupid soda bottle label off. Tacky, tacky!

EXHIBIT B: The absurdly impractical cuff bracelet–now with random EXTRA glitter!

Happy, happy! A castoff leather cuff bracelet, just begging for a Crafty Bag Lady makeover…all mine! All I had to do was find a new embellishment for it. There were dozens, if not hundreds of possibilities in my stash. Inexplicably, I chose a green pottery rose–not for a moment considering its complete unsuitability for the purpose.

My next hurdle: an adhesive to stick ceramic to leather. Because of the rose’s dimensions, I couldn’t clamp or put anything heavy on it, so I reached for my good friend Gorilla Glue and thought the problem was licked. Not until it dried did I notice the unsightly yellowish glue halo all around the rose. Ever tried to peel that stuff off of leather? Ever tried peeling concrete off a sidewalk with a spatula?

OK, so I was stuck with it (sorry; corny pun genes in my family.) So then I thought, What’s cuter and covers more crafty sins than glitter? Aha! A very Crafty Chica solution! I am so clever! Except that the glitter didn’t hide the glue halo as much as draw attention to it like a flashing neon CRAFT DORK sign.

Oh, but I’m stubborn. I would hold my head up and wear my glitter-enhanced gluey green rose and leather cuff and wear it proudly! Except that the weight of the rose constantly pulls the cuff down, snap side up. I always have to watch that the delicate rose doesn’t get chipped, and I can’t get the rose off without busting it up. I can’t wear it anywhere. It’s sad…it’s lonely…it haunts my jewelry rack as a reminder that all that glitters is not crafty gold.

EXHIBIT C: Cheerios, pepperoni, and mouse droppings necklace

This is my most infamous handmade-gone-toxic. And like brown eyes, big feet, and a funny-shaped thumb, it is with me till the day I die.

It was the 90′s and Fimo was all the rage! Everybody who was anybody was buying the stuff and churning out mountains of intricately designed beads and other gorgeous adornments. Me too! Me too! Can I come into your playhouse? See, I bought some clay of my very own! Cinnamon and beige and black–isn’t that an interesting and fun combination? Hey, I’m an artist, just like you! And just look at this classy polyester string! Cool, huh? Huh? And I’ll even do nice little knots between the beads as spacers…’cuz I’m so artsy…

Ba da DUMB.

The beads are misshapen and not funky enough to be cool but not nice enough to be acceptable. The knots are tied too far away from the beads. This necklace is so bad that it’s been through three garage sales and I haven’t been able to unload it for 25 cents. I tried to give it away once; the erstwhile recipient declined. I even put it in a Freecycle box and I swear, the thing actually came back to me! Accckkk!

Thus it is destiny, the necklace and me: together forever, forever together, till death do us part. And I’ve never touched Fimo again.