Friday Crafts

All week I've been itching to do something crafty.  I had a couple ideas with one of those involving all day yesterday and today but I couldn't get the details figured out in my head.  I finally got it figured out this morning and hopefully will get to tackle that next week.

In the meantime, I decided to create some decorations for our new bookshelves.  I've seen a lot of pictures lately of things using twine.  I've seen a lot of people wrapping twine around different shapes to create their own pieces.  I asked Mike if he had twine I could use and he pulled out kite string for me.  I looked at him and reached in to grab the actual thick twine he was trying to hide. 

What's his is mine, mine is his...share and share alike, buddy.

I really wanted to stretch my crafting genius, so I searched high and low for three different shaped objects we already had that I could wrap twine around.  I came up with an empty two-liter, and empty Crystal Light plastic container, and a small vase I recently received flowers in.  Then I realized that would all require a lot of twine; possibly more than I had.  So, I came up with a new plan and started all over again.

I began with these:

The two-liter was replaced by an empty wine bottle that hopefully Mike wasn't saving for anything in particular.  But, I liked the color of it and figured it only needed the label removed.

I started with the empty (and cleaned out) Crystal Light container.  I wanted varying heights on my vases/bottles, so I marked a line and cut the top part off:

Not only can it cut through tomatoes and metal cans, it cuts through plastic!  Ron Popeil would be so proud.

I tied a knot on one side and got out my trusty glue gun (of which I'm becoming more and more fond).  I put a little dab under the knot and started wrapping the twine around the cannister, keeping it as tight as possible and adding a small line of glue here and there to keep things in place.

Pretty soon container #1 was done.

Next I started on the small glass vase.  I wasn't sure I would have enough twine for this and I was thinking it would be a lot of brown.  But, I wanted some texture, so I decided to cover the vase in masking tape.  I intended for the tape to be bumpy and overlapping to create more texture so I had the strips running all over the place.  Think paper-mache without the goop.

I really had no idea if this was going to work, but it was a lot of fun.  Next I pulled out my craft paints, which I've decided I need to invest in when they are on sale.  Luckily I had an orange and brown to mix together to match our family room colors.

I painted a couple coats of my custom orange color and decided it needed something.  So, I got out my chocolate colored glaze and wipe it around.  This was good and bad.  I hadn't let the orange dry enough I guess so some of it peeled off, but in the end, I liked the little bits of color patching it resulted in.

So I had my green bottle, my orange vase and my twine vase and it didn't look right.  They just didn't tie together.  So, I had the idea to twine the top part of the green bottle and tie a bit of twine around the orange vase.  As a last ditch effort to make something I actually liked, I added a quick monogram to the all-twine container.  I think that helped a lot in making it look like...well, like something intentional and not just a large stack of twine.

The final result...

I'm waiting to see how long it takes Mike to notice them.