Snatching victory from the jaws of disaster

When I explain how this card came to be, you'll understand the title:

I used:

- 5" x 7" white card stock

- plain bauble die by Memory Box 'Classic Ornament', die cut from a lovely rich red sparkly film, self adhesive which was stuck onto a snippet of deep red card before cutting. Memory Box 'Snowflake Ornament', die cut from silver mirri card. The tops of the baubles come with the 'Classic Ornament' die and do add a nice contrast. The bows were cut in silver mirri card using one of the two lovely dies which come in the Memory Box 'Crisp Bows' set

- and this is where disaster struck :( Before adding anything to the cards I'd stamped a Christmas greeting in the bottom right hand corner in SU 'Real Red' - and forgotten to blot and check they were totally dry. To line up the very bottom tips of the baubles I used a ruler held diagonally across the card- and did this on all three of the cards I was batch making. Sigh, you know what's coming - yup, the sentiment smudged on all three cards!

- the smudging was too bad to decently cover with a larger sentiment stamped onto a shaped die cut, it would just have looked 'bodged'. So, I ran round the craft room screaming for a while as there seemed to be no way forward - other than just dump the cards, after such a lot of work had gone into cutting all those dies etc.

- whilst pondering what to do I carefully trimmed the cards diagonally across the bottom of the baubles - which of course left a card which wouldn't stand up, I had already worked that fact out though so at least that didn't come as yet another shock :)

- head in hands, out of the corner of my eye I spotted some of the rich red sparkly self-adhesive film still on the desk - bingo!

- I cut white card backings the same width and just a tad shorter in height as the card fronts (to ensure that the cards would still fold crisply), then added straight bands of the red sparkly film across the bottom of each backing piece

- next, the trickiest part was lining them up properly and to do this I used removable tape runner to temporarily fasten the additional 'front' section to the inside of the back of the card exactly where it ought to be before using ultra strong DST to fasten the new backing to the front of the card

- to be honest I really like the end result and will be doing it again (deliberately!). If you try this one, remember it can be quite hard lining up that additional front portion. One little trick is that so long as the left hand side and the bottom edge are spot on, so that the point on the bottom left meets perfectly, you can always trim/guillotine the right hand side of the card slightly. It's the left hand side that's the most important bit

Think I aged a year or two in the process of this salvage operation though. 

 I was reminded of the most ridiculously incompetent boss on this planet when writing the post title (I secretly nicknamed him Noddy 'cos all that was missing was the hat with a little bell on the end). It was my misfortune to carry him on my back, cover for and rescue work for him for a few years - and how we longed for 'Noddy' to take his many holidays and leave us in peace without wondering what he'd c*ck up next. Apart from once telling him face to face that he couldn't manage his way out of a paper bag (trust me, I do have my limits if someone presses all the wrong buttons) - I also used to say that he could snatch disaster from the jaws of victory, and be frighteningly triumphant about it as well :(

Tomorrow I'll have a Tuesday Tale which illustrates what he was like :)

Di
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