Craft Fail; Book Review

I’m so glad that I was invited to review an advance copy of Craft Fail; When Homemade Goes Horribly Wrong by Heather Mann. I spent two evenings reading the book and sharing the tales of craft failures with my husband and we both got quite a few laughs!

I think anyone who crafts or cooks or makes anything handmade has had their share of craft fails! Heather was a genius to turn those fails into successes by sharing stories of failures on her blog at CraftFail.com and now in this book. I mean really, if you are going to fail, there is now the hope that you can fail well enough to make your failure story a success, right?

The story that brought tears to my husband’s eyes is found on page 90 in the “Food Fails” section. A woman who was attempting to pound chickn breasts for a recipe thought that there must be a better way. She tried running over them with her car! The bag popped and the chicken breast flew across the driveway. They ended up with pizza for dinner and her son captured this on video to share with his father. I think my husband got a particular kick out of it because he imagined coming home to this situation.

One fail that I can completely identify with as a quilter/sewist is pictured above. I have stitched through countless plastic decorative pin heads, a tape measure, etc. And then there are the similar instances of quilting and accidentally quilting something onto the back of the quilt or quilting over the folded edge of the quilt without realizing it. My readers will all identify.

My favorite chapter is the one devoted to Martha Stewart called “Martha Made It.” I would say that 75% of my fails are Martha fails and could fit right into this chapter. My fails have not been following her crafts so much as her recipes. I have had so many Martha recipe fails that I only wish I knew about Craft Fails sooner. I could have submitted and had some truly famous failures. At the moment, I am wracking my brain to think of specifics but with no luck. Rest assured though, my Martha recipe fails are famous with my husband and mother (who also can’t remember specifics!). In case you were curious, the other 25% of my fails are frosting related. We have had many a birthday cake secured with toothpicks to keep the layers from sliding.

This book is definitely a fun read. It’s fun for kids to flip through too just note that there is a Santa spoiler on page 64.

I hope you get a chance to read a copy of this book! It became available on October 21 and you can find it on Amazon