The simplest things defeat me...

I came across this tutorial for an adorable travel frame set and fell in love with it. I mean, look at it. It is the picture of adorableness is it not?

I thought it looked fairly simple and you know, I'm pretty sure it is. But I spent an hour last night and this is what I ended up with:


I attached the wrong pieces to the wrong pieces and screwed up the stitching and I'm not even sure my felt was cut perfectly square.

So I gave up. I started again this evening. I reread the tutorial, rewrote it, and started out again.

Two hours later, all I have to show for it is this:


I mean, it looks okay, right? But it's not. After finally attaching the correct pieces to the correct pieces, I find that one of them is bigger than the other and there's really no way to trim it. And the white I used for the frame is kind of wonky because...and I realize that this is part of my problem: my felt sucks. Not only that, my sizing is totally OFF.

For as adorable as I think this project is, I'm tossing it away because I can't make it work. I had dreams of adorable little travel frames I could send with letters to friends; adorable little embroidered things where I'd include a picture of my cats and that they could replace at whim with something more suitable. They were so CUTE in my head, but when I tried creating one, it just didn't work.

I don't think it's creator intended for it to be a 3 hour project.

Here's why I failed:
1. Sucky, regular old, acrylic craft felt. I think the key to this project is using some nice wool felt. Only problem is I have tons of one and none of the other.
2. The directions are in CM not Inches. I know this is silly, but the CM's really tripped me up. Sure, I could easily convert them, but for some reason the CM were a road block for me.

Should you try this yourself: I ended up using the plastic sleeves used to house ATC's. I have hundreds of ATC's and quite a few empty pages. Cut a pocket apart and it seemed to be perfect for creating the frame.

There is nothing more unsatisfying than being frustrated from something I'm sure is so simple!