Do you ever browse Pinterest and see all these beautiful crafts, yummy recipes, DIY home decor and think “Hey, I can totally do that!” only to find that it doesn’t turn out quite as great as you thought it would?
Would it make you feel better to know that you’re not alone? Crafters, bloggers, DIYers, we’ve all had those craftfail moments, we just don’t always brag about them. Until now! The new book CRAFTFAIL by blogger and crafter Heather Mann of craftfail.com is the creative failure tell-all book. The inspiration photos side by side with the real results will leave you cracking up, and ultimately feeling like you should give yourself a pat on the back for the good job you did on your own craft endeavors!
CRAFTFAIL (Workman; November 2014) illustrates the hilariously gruesome underbelly of the creative process. Inspired by her own craft experiences, Heather gathered real-life home decor fails, fashion fails, holiday fails, food fails, kid crafting fails, and best of all—EPIC fails (those projects that are so inspiring that they are attempted again and again by members of the crafty tribe to, quite frankly, disastrous results)! Filled with over 100 full-color photographs of the hoped-for outcome and the underwhelming reality (plus captions pointing out what went wrong), these embarrassing and often pathetic crafting attempts are the stuff that gets the “A for Effort” and LOL for outcome.
But amidst all the terrible failure is a celebration of those among us who are brave enough to pick up the scissors and get crafty! Because even if you can’t make a handsome Papier mâché stag to hang on your wall, why shouldn’t you try? As Heather says, you learn more from trying and failing than not trying at all. And when it does go wrong—as it inevitably will—you can always find solace in sitting back and laughing at the ridiculous results. As one anonymous crafter said: “It wasn’t supposed to end this way.” Luckily for us, it did.
I’ve been anticipating this book since I first heard it was in the works. It did not disappoint. It’s truly hilarious, and you may just be shocked at some of the failures that these brave creatives were comfortable sharing.
I personally have a few friends in mind that this will make a great little Christmas gift for this year!
About the Author:
Heather Mann, the founder of CraftFail.com and DollarStoreCrafts.com, has been crafting with middling success all her life, but blogging expertly since 2000. She is also cofounder of The Blueprint Social, a social media consulting company and network of influential bloggers, and co-host of the web show Get a Little Creative. She lives and crafts in Salem, Oregon.
