Well I finished my first craft! The yarn wreath! I looked up a bunch of how tos in order to make it and I don't quite think I knew what I was getting myself into even though I'm totally impressed with the final outcome, especially since it was my first one! Last Friday I made a run to JoAnn's Fabrics on my way home and stocked up on yarn, lots of felt, 2 hay wreathes, one styrofoam wreath and a hot glue gun. I got it all back to my house and had to laugh because as usual I over purchased. But I set to work after dinner and decided to start with one of the hay wreathes. I had read online to keep the plastic wrapper on it and I'm glad I did because I can only imagine the frustration that would have come if I had taken the wrapper off. But I wrapped the string around that wreath for something close to 3 hours! Yes, I took occasional breaks to rest my hands but it actually took that long to finish. My friend (and future guest blogger) Kathleen did the smaller styrofoam wreath and her's took half the time and went a little smoother. So I wrapped and wrapped and rested and wrapped some more and finally I had finished wrapping the wreath. I was pretty impressed with the way it turned out. I had decided to do white yarn on my first one so I could put a ton of color on it with the flowers. Then I set to work on making flowers. Now online I had found many different styles of flowers to make but the first one I attempted was a flat petal leaf. I had found a template to use online so I cut out my petals and glued them together and ended up with a pretty impressive pink and white flower. I decided to try to make rose-like-flowers and that was more interesting to make. You basically start with a circle of felt and cut a wavy edge on it and then continue to cut wavy spiral until the whole circle is one long piece. After you have th giant strip of felt you start at one end and roll it up. Interestingly you can see the rose pretty quickly. There are tons of tutorials online to get a better idea of what on earth I'm talking about. After I had finished making 2 "big" roses, I decided to make 6 small roses to I could get some balance on either side of my large petal flower. I hot glued it all on the wreath and bam finito (sp)! Like I said, I'm pretty impressed with the way the first craft turned out. I plan on perfecting my flower making skills and even attempting a 4-leaf clover and maybe make a St. Patty's wreath. The possibilities are endless with designs for these things. I think I may have found next year's Christmas presents to family and Friends! I'll post a picture of my final product of my first wreath and as I continue making others I'll post those too.
