Pinterest: I tried it!

Today I'm trying something new!  Kristen over at bythebookpaper had the most excellent idea to start a weekly blog series on Pinterest.  If you're like me, you may have a giant Pinterest board of DIY craft projects or recipes that you're longing to try.  Well, Kristen has decided to encourage us to actually *do* all these pins that we've spent hours diligently pinning.  Each Thursday, I'll try to post a pin from my Crafts & DIY pinterest board that I've successfully attempted (key word being "attempted").

This past week, I tried to recreate a pin I'd been eyeing, and really an item I wanted to make for a long while:

This is my original pin, which goes to a yarn wreath tutorial by Mrs. Priss

 I love yarn wreaths.  I have some others pinned also.  I've bought a few off of Etsy....they are just so fun and colorful and happy...they add a little bit of childhood cheer to your house or front door :)

So this weekend is my mom's birthday, and we happen to be traveling to Dallas for the LSU-Oregon season opener football game.  So I decided to make her an LSU yarn wreath based on my pin!

You can see I started out with pretty much the standard materials -- a foam wreath form I got at JoAnn, some yellow felt for the pom pom flowers, yellow and purple yarn, a hot glue gun (represented by two hot glue sticks haha), and scissors (unfortunately not shown, but I think you can figure it out).

You can follow Mrs. Priss' tutorial.  You simply wrap your yarn around your wreath form in whatever design or pattern you want.  I didn't use an exact scientific method, just lots and lots of wrapping until everything looked relatively even.  It takes a long time to finish a whole wreath.  I must have watched 5 episodes of Buffy.  Now I understand why some people charge upwards of $50 for these babies on Etsy.  Happy birthday mom.

You can decide how you to finish of the ends of the yarn.  Simply tying it is an option.  I tied and then hot glued the knot for extra strength, but that gave the back of my wreath a slightly funky look.  You could even use pins to hold everything down if you wanted to.

Ta da!

And voila, a nifty cute lil LSU wreath specially for my momma.  I made the yellow pom poms with some felt.  Unfortunately I have no pics of the process, but that's really easy also.  Just cut out two inch strips of felt (the longer =  the bigger the pom pom).  Fold in half and glue along the edges (not on the inside).  Then, make little cuts every half inch or so along the strip on the inside (non-glued side).  Start on one end of the strip and being rolling around and around the center, gluing where you want to, then glue closed.  Instant pom pom! 

Now I'm excited to try more wreaths...one for every season and every holiday and some just for fun!

I hope that made sense, let me know if you have questions!  This concludes our very first Pinterest Thursday.  One pin down, many many more to go!

Want to join in?  Let me know what you've made from Pinterest!


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