Mishaps with perforation and snipping your parchment

Since Josie Davidson started the Parchment Trading Cards and Coins monthly challenge, I have been using it to build up a collection for future use.  Once I have done the one needed for the month, I do several more, roughly based on the monthly theme.

So far, I have only managed two extras this month, but I decided to show them.  Neither are perfect and have bad faults, but we learn from our mistakes and they are only tiny pieces anyway.

This one looks ok in this poor photo, but in real life, it is a very different matter.  It started right and the snipping is not too bad.  I perforated very shallowly to begin with because I needed to emboss between.  That is where it went wrong.  The embossing is very rough, and that is because I was too impatient and did not leave enough time for the parchment to relax.  Someone who doesn't know much about parching would probably like it, but it is not right and it leaves me slightly frustrated with myself.  I know better than to rush.

The picots are not too bad, because I did take the time to re-perforate each section before snipping.  That makes such a difference.

This is my second piece, also with annoying faults, which I could have avoided with a bit more planning.

This time I started well, working from the outside with circuits of each shape, again shallow perforating.  You can probably work out where my maths went a bit awry and the circuits became messy.   I added smallish dots in various places, but the messed up but would have been better left alone.  Again, I re-perforated each row before snipping one section at a time.

Next time,I will try working it out properly on grid paper first instead of winging it.  I think I might be adding a couple or three of Tina's small flowers to cover the worst.  

You might be wondering why I am blogging about two poor pieces of work.  Well, my reason is to show that we, none of us, get it right all the time, and learn from our mistakes.  Don't be put off, no matter what hobby you undertake.  None of us are born as Olympic gold medallists.  We all have to learn to walk before we can run.  So in our hobbies, we need to learn and practice the basics before progressing to the advanced stuff.  Enjoy the process of learning, not just the end results.

Have fun.  Life is too short to stress over a tiny piece of paper.

If you enjoyed reading this, I would love you to leave a comment here.