Upycled Rubberband Valentine Tutorial or when good tutorials go bad ... ah the heartbreak

Sometimes when crafting, the thing you end up with is not exactly the picture you had in your head when you started.

(and this is the beauty of handmade and I really truly believe this, even when things go ... well, kind of bad -

maybe not life in prison with no chance of parole kind of bad, but more like a couple weeks in county with a roommate named Ginger who really, really likes your hair -

not that this has happened to me)

So although this project has some problems with it I decided to post it anyway because - 1. perfection is highly overrated and 2. many of my mistakes you can avoid

Although I am giving you a step by step of what I did I will add a little instruction for the way I would do it if I was to do it again

(which I never, ever will, trust me on this)

You will need: rubberbands (now, maybe there is a reason stringart is done with actual string, but I had a bag of rubberbands in my kitchen drawer that were just screaming Valentine's Day at me - use your own judgement on this), nails, cork, a back board (I used a second piece of cork flooring under the first tile which proved to not be strong enough for the rubberbands which wanted to pull everything inward so I would recommend the wood backboard the pattern suggests - ugh), a hammer (I started out with my trusty mallet, but soon had to switch to the slimmer hammer head), the pattern, a calculator and lots of patience

1. Lay out your pattern and hammer in 80 little nails, yes I said 80
2. Tear out the pattern center (the instructions say to remove the entire pattern at this point, but I don't see how this project is possible to do without the numbers, so leave the numbers)
3. Follow pattern section 1 (this one is easy peasy)
4. Follow pattern section 2 (good luck with this one, maybe remove small children from your immediate vicinity because your language is going to be rough - also pour yourself a drink)
5. Pull out the little pieces of paper with tweezers
6. I cut my cork to fit in an embroidery hoop, but this would look just as cool on a clipboard or something simple

<----Now, I admit I did not end up with anything nearly as amazing as this and you may have to squint a little bit to see my heart, but as I tell my family sometimes when I am accused of heartlessness, it's in there, trust me.

Also my pattern went wayward when I tracked on the right side and I didn't quite manage the gorgeous circular fold with my heart - not sure if this is a result of the rubberbands or my own placement mistakes - and my nails, without the solid backboard and because of the rubberband pressure, have gone a little wonky - but I will just keep everyone 5-10 feet away from it and don't think anyone will notice the flaws.

(I find this is good advice for most things)