I Love the Night Life

Crochet night that is...especially when it includes a little Dollar Store craft shopping! (and incidentally I love to boogie on the disco rooooound too) If you hadn't guessed from the spasticness of that beginning, it's long lost Shannon here. I really need to get my act together. I have a zillion projects to post, but I have to get my pictures organized first. In the meantime, I'm just too excited about our crochet night last night to not post about it. My camera is all wonky so you'll have to excuse the phone pics. (not like my camera pics are any better lol) Anyway, check out this little beauty. All in all I spent 2 dollars and the rest of the materials I already had on hand.

I'm totally in love with this sweetness. Let me walk you through its creation. First, Kami sent me an email one day that said "We should make these sometime soon" Of course the first thing I did when I clicked on her link was my signature high pitched squeal. I love the colors and I could just eat up those adorable little felt flowers. Coincidentally I happened to have been reading this blog post and loved the wreath she made too. She used book pages to make rosettes. I noticed that she said she'd made  rosettes out of felt too previously so I was all excited to have a tutorial. I thought, I'll do both wreaths! Where will I put two wreaths? No clue, but I'll do them both anyway! (I'm ambitious like that) The day before yesterday I took a little solo trip to the dollar store and picked up a styrofoam wreath form. I also picked up these little tiny balls meant to be vase fillers. I have no clue what they're made of but they're really staticky. Anyway, I picked up a couple of colors to use as embellishments for lots of things on the cheap.

Now I don't have extra books lying around my house. I usually borrow books from my sister or my mom and then return them. The few books I have at home are ones I want to keep intact. I've looked around thrift shops and the dollar store for books that I would feel comfortable ripping up and I always seem to find books about murderers and politics. Call me superstitious, even if the pages are cut up and no one can read them, just knowing that type of material is hanging on my wall would give me the heebie jeebies. Although we did find dictionaries and thesauri (is that the plural? hee hee) at the dollar store so that is a thought. In any case I have tons of newspaper. I kind of dig the slightly darker coloring they give the flowers. When I started making these little rosettes, I quickly discovered that they take forever. I think it was just hard for me to get a good rhythm. I experimented with how far apart to space the spirals, how big to make them, etc. So all of the smaller ones I made came out looking very different from one another. Not necessarily bad but annoying. I finally figured out how to make one bigger rosette but by that time it was almost crochet night! At this point I was seriously reconsidering making a whole wreath's worth. So last night Kami and I took another trip to the dollar store because I was way too excited to show her the fun things I found. She bought some more balls (lol) and wreath forms too. By the time we got home I'd decided to make the yarn wrapped wreath and use the rosettes as embellishments. A few more rosettes, duct taping (that foam gets messy), and hours of yarn wrapping ended up coming together to make something even cuter than I had envisioned. Add to that a few cream colored balls to embellish the embellishments and I was smitten.

Lastly I needed something to hang it with. So out came my trusty twine. For some reason I really love doing stuff with twine. I crocheted a regular chain and noticed that it started spiralling on its own. What an unexpected, happy surprise! So I glued it to the back of the wreath and realized I made it too long. No worries, just double that baby up and it perfectly covers the ghetto push pin I used to hang it.

Here she is resting in her final home. I'm using the cabinets I got from Kami as my "mantle" for decorations. I'm the type who has a designated decor space in each room. I like the rest of my flat surfaces to be really simple and uncluttered. Hey, I said that's what I like, not that my apartment actually looks that way!

Along the way Kami was going on her own wreath. It's amazing how it can be the same general idea but come out so different. And SOOOO CUTE! I'm going to turn the time over to Kami now to share her adorableness. Feel free to jump up and down and clap. I did.

enter kamcicle: 

kami here!  you'll notice that i'm entirely too lazy to capitalize.  that's how you can tell us apart!

i'm am so excited about this little guy that i can barely stand it.  i had the intention to make some as gifts, but wrapping things in yarn takes FOREVER so i'll have to love you a lot to consider something any bigger than this.  

as shannon mentioned, we bought foam wreath forms to cover in yarn.  this is all fine and good except for that they are floral foam wreaths, which are messy and break easy.  *siiiiiiiiiiigh*  plan b.  lucky for us, shannon had some duct tape. so what you see in these pictures is a labor of love and cuteness.  because not only did it take a few hours to wrap this lil' guy in yarn, we had to pre-wrap the wreath in tape.  

and as she was making her rosettes out of paper, i was crocheting as fast as my little hands could take me.  4 rosettes later, some white balls (haha, can you tell we think it's funny when someone says balls?) and presto!  not really presto, but presto in blogger land!

behold:

i wanted to match the flowers, so i crocheted a little ribbon like dealio for the hanger. i must say, i'm a little in love.  it's on the wall here just so i can take a picture. i'm still debating on it's permanent home.  

stay tuned for more adorableness!  

And because we gals love a good party, check out where we linked!

  

http://www.sugaranddots.com/2011/01/what-i-whipped-up-wednesday-linky-party_11.html

and here and here too!