Remember my Family Fun Challenge? Well, today I decided to do a craft from another magazine instead. Our newest Clubhouse, Jr. magazine was about Mother’s Day so there were tons of cute Mother’s Day crafts in the magazine and on the website.

The Marble-lous Cards looked so fun and I knew Lydia and Asa would love it. The idea is to use shavings of chalk floating in water to “marbleize” some paper with beautiful colors. Then you cut the marbleized paper into a shape and use it to decorate the front of the card. After you embellish it with a few beads or jewels, you get something super cute. Like this:

So, we gathered our materials (chalk, plastic knife, 2 cups of water, 1/4 cup of vinegar, white cardstock, assorted construction paper) and got set up.

I poured the water and vinegar into the dish. Then used the plastic knife to shave some of the chalk into the water. I *think* the chalk was supposed to float on the top. Well, apparently, when you use sidewalk chalk that has been sitting outside for two months, it just sinks to the bottom.

So, after experimenting with placing the paper on top of the water (like the instructions read) and getting only wet paper in return, we had a new idea: FINGER PAINTING!

We dipped our fingers in the water, smashed some of the chalk onto our fingers and then smeared it on our paper! And what do you know? It actually worked!

We’re still waiting on the rest of them to dry, but we did cut one out and made a heart-balloon card for our Compassion daughter, Alizeta! Lydia wants to do a robot for our little boy, David. And a crown for Mari Luz!

We didn’t really get a marbleized look, but it is a nice watercolor affect. So, for what started out as a craft fail, this turned out all right! Plus it’s an easy, fun, flat and pretty cute gift to send to our sponsored children!

You know most of my crafting experiences are fails anyway, so I’m always glad when something turns out relatively cute! Have you ever turned a craft fail into a craft win?