Ashley Hackshaw, Author at Ashley Hackshaw / Lil Blue Boo

Shari is the only person in the whole world to have her own “subfolder” in my email inbox…….she always has the best advice, is always making something new, and I can’t bear to delete any them. I especially look forward to the photos she sends and how “thrilled” her daughter looks when she has to try Shari’s creations on. Finley, like Sienna, does NOT like trying on clothes that Mommy made…..and her expressions are just priceless. Check on the “mosaic” recycled t-shirt dress Shari made on the right….amazing!

Since she refuses to start her own “creative” blog (I mean, maybe she IS busy running her business Happy Chickadee, being a fabulous mother and keeping up with a gazillion other responsibilities), I’ve been pressuring her forever to be a guest blogger on Lil Blue Boo…and she finally caved!

Please welcome my first guest blogger….my friend (and “full-time consultant”) Shari:

OK, so I’ve been having anxiety over writing this guest blog post for, well, months! I keep putting it off…have you seen how many creative and awesome people follow this blog? And, hello, can Ashley do anything wrong? (She’s going to kill me for saying that!)

A little bit about me: My name is Shari and I’m a busy stay at home mum to 3 year old Finley. I love to sew (I am honored to be a pattern tester for Ashley), and I mostly sew things for my little girl, which she then refuses to wear. I am a lover of color and I especially love trying to make colors that don’t necessarily work together, work. That basically got me through art school 🙂 Before starting our family, I was an art dealer and I would paint when I had the time. Now, I barely have time to doodle! So sewing is a great thing for me because I can put it down and start back up without missing a beat.

You might remember a while back Ashley blogged asking us what the most unusual thing we use as decoration in our home is. I emailed Ashley a picture of mine, as I do with pretty much every project I do. She’s been my crafting muse since the day we met. Anyhow, so my unusual decor item are two very old bricks from the first home my husband and I lived in. The house was demolished about 5 years ago, and I keep these old dusty bricks proudly displayed on our mantle.

The house was an adorable, tiny, not well insulated (can you say “get your ski hats out, it’s 40 degrees below outside and we ran out of oil in the furnace!”) little 1940’s manufactured home sitting on 700 gorgeous acres in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. To me, those 2 bricks are not only beautiful, but the memories they hold are too. Needless to say, I’ve heard many comments such as “What are those dirty/ugly/odd/fill-in-the-adjective looking things on your mantle?” So that got me thinking about beauty, and what one considers beautiful is so relative and subjective.

I remember once years ago there was an exhibit of the worst paintings by all these absolutely famous artists. Paintings we would look at and probably say “wow.” But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and not only that, let’s face it, we all screw up our projects sometimes, even famous artists like Picasso, or bloggers like Ashley. 😉

So today I ask you: what is your craft project gone bad?

Sadly, I have a slew of items to pick from. Let me see, it could be the terrible rust colored dress I made my daughter using an old silk shirt of my husbands. Ashley said “It’s cute” in an email. but I could tell by the lack of exclamation marks, it certainly was not. What was I thinking? My child looks like she belongs in Little House on the Prairie in this one!

Or maybe it’s my first pair of pants that I sewed. I somehow managed to sew it so that the front of the pants were made up of a front and back panel, same with the back of the pants of course, and even better yet, I sewed them upside down.

The topper of failed projects may have been dinner last month. It was my husband’s 40th birthday, and I decided to try out a bunch of new recipes. The fritters were tossed before they were even served. The linguine in a curry cream sauce was miserable, somehow the cream sauce decided to separate and coagulate. Yuck. And, the chocolate peanut butter ice cream I made resembled the texture of what my husband described as “curdled milk.” Nothing like a fine meal to say “Happy Birthday!” eh?

Oh, and I nearly forgot the bird mobile that plagued me, and even after Ashley lent me some drill tips and I labored over the thing forever, I ended up back at Ashley’s house with a bag full of 9 sewn birds and said “Here you go, you figure out what to do with these, cause I don’t want to see them in my house anymore!” (They now peek over Ashley’s fabric piles as she sews. By the way, does anyone else in the world have such neat fabric piles, or am I crazy to think that Ashley is indeed Superwoman?!)

Anyhow, so my point of this blog post….as we all struggle to make gorgeous things every day, and keep up with the Picasso’s and Ashley’s of the world, let’s take a moment and give a standing ovation to our failed projects. Without them, how could we appreciate all the beauty we otherwise create?

I hope you guys want to share some of your failed projects stories…it would be nice to know I’m not alone!

Happy day everyone…Ashley will be back soon, promise! 🙂

Shari

So You Think Your Crafty? Week 2

"One Faith"

Meet Shari!