Not Crafty (Yet)

Here’s the deal. I certainly wouldn’t call myself “crafty.” In fact, until quite recently I’ve thought of myself as being very much the opposite of crafty. Not that I’m not interested in seeing the beautiful and astonishingly creative things people are able to produce (just take a gander at Etsy, right?), but I stayed very decidedly on the sidelines.

I’ve had some unsuccessful attempts at those paint-and-drink-wine-with-girlfriends places and was left the shameful owner of some pretty horrendous paintings. Art? Nope. So, I thought, why invest time/money/energy/etc. into something that probably won’t turn out well or be something useful to improve my life or home?

And then there was Pinterest.

Oh, Pinterest. How I love thee, and how addicting thou art.

I was a latecomer to the virtual bulletin board site, but once I got going it was an instant love. The clothes! The recipes! The…crafts? Yes, I started to get inspired. Maybe I could try to make some of these things. And maybe those things would actually enhance my world in a beautiful way, rather than becoming yet another trash-bound catastrophe.

What follows was my first foray into Pinterest-inspired crafts. I’m certainly not crafty yet, but this was definitely a fun (and seasonally appropriate) project:

Cranberry Letter:

1. Gather your supplies. You’ll need fake cranberry (or holly) berries, a glue gun (I had to buy one for this project — told you I was new to crafting!), wide ribbon, and a large letter (made of wood or metal).

2. Add berries. Remove berries from wreath (or branch, depending on what type of berries you found) and begin gluing them onto the letter. I found it was easiest and most time efficient to try to remove the berries in bunches rather than individually. It made it faster and also easier to add texture to the placement.

3. Ribbonize. Find the best way to add ribbon to your letter, and attach appropriately. With a curvy letter, like the “S” pictured above (that one’s for my sister…shh!), you could loop the ribbon around the letter. For the “K” I made for our house, though, it made more sense to whip out the trusty glue gun again and glue the ribbon to the back of the letter. The result? A lovely tree topper for the Keller household*!

(*Kevin says it looks a little like our tree won a varsity letter. Remember: I’m new to this!)

What should my next crafting project be?