letters of love .. and yarn

I won't lie - since the holidays are over I'm seriously craving projects. For the last 2 months, there's been an endless array of keepsakes, decorations, & baked deliciousness to occupy my stubby little hands.

Lately after work, I've found myself more than once searching through my pinboards for projects.

Let me just mention one of the few flaws of Pinterest .. addiction ! lol

You start to pin EvEryThinG you see & your 'I want to do this' list suddenly becomes massive. Before you know it you have 500 1000 2500 4025 pins .. :/

then ... all the crafty things start to look alike - aahhhhh !!

So with that in mind, I created my new 'bored' board for stuff I can ''''easily'''' create with stuff around the house and if I am lucky enough to have some free time.
the """"quotations"""" imply that I am using those annoying finger quotes - just fyi ;)

I looked through bunches tons waaayyy too many pins and found this. I figured it looked fun/simple/cheap, so I decided to give it a go.

I have tons of yarn and more cardboard from Christmas than I know what to do with - thanks to another 'flaw' of pinterest. Not wanting to throw AnYtHInG away .. just in case.

ok .. enough rantin' and ravin' - onto the craft !

I just know my husband has to be tired of hearing me say "... it looked so simple."

This particular craft wasn't hard - it was just a lot more time consuming than it appeared. I wish I could say this was the first time such a misconception was born ...

Not only am I an audacious 'I can get that done in no time' crafter .. I'm an 'I don't need instructions for that - let's just do it!' crafter ... >_<

I have a vast knowledge of the craft that I gathered from the 4 seconds of looking at the picture; I figured it was 5 pretty simple steps.

• print out large letter
• trace onto cardboard
• cut out of cardboard
• wrap in yarn
• glue gun on the backside for stability

easy peasy ...

The girls had friends over for the night, so it was a perfect time for me to get to crafting. With my high tech accoutrement lined out before me - I was ready to go :)

I decided the easiest way to 'trace' the letter onto the cardboard, would be to create the polar opposite of a stencil.

I cut the letters out
applied 2way tape to the back
then, adhered the letter to the cardboard

This next step could have been done with pencils or crayons, just as easily .. but this seemed fast and more accurate. I also feared if I tried to 'color over' the letter cutout, I would bend and fold the paper - thus leading to a funky letter.

No.. my ocd won't let me do such things.

So .. I spray painted it I enlisted the help of my wonderful husband to paint them :)

It was a ridiculous 17 degrees outside .. he's such a gentleman!!

After he, so graciously, spray painted over the letters for me -I peeled the paper off the cardboard & revealed a perfect outline of the letters. *beaming proud face*

When it was time to cut the letters out - once again, the husband came to the rescue and we went to town with our matching exacto blades. :)


We discovered it's easiest to 'trace' a line with the blade through the first couple layers. Then, with a firm grip and some pressure - cut long steady cuts through the hardest part (the bottom) of the cardboard.

After carving the letters, our fingers ached with a painful indent of the edge on the exacto blade .. but I had to keep going! So, I did go on; with the foolish notion the cardboard carving would've been the hard part. lol @ me.

I taped a 'starting point' for the yarn onto the back of the letter and began to tightly wind the yarn around & around & around & around ...

I was thankful for my fingernails, because I used them to scoot any yarn that wasn't as tightly wound as I wanted it to be.

I was also thankful for the husband (again) because he conquered the A for me.

The A frightened me.

I wasn't sure where to start or how to do the middle or how to do the parts that you couldn't wind the yarn all the way around .. so he did.

As per my M.O. - I started on my craft way too late at night. I also couldn't figure out which letter I wanted to do first, so I did half of the K & then decided to start the C .. then I ran into the proverbial wall of exhaustion.

So, this was what I went to bed with set aside to be finished 'tomorrow.'

fast forward 2 days .. we had time to finish up the 'letters of love.'

We carried on winding the yarn around & around the letters. The challenging parts were the very 'ends' of the letters, where you had nowhere to securely wind the yarn.

We clipped pieces of the yarn and glued them into place, neatly on the front.

We knew we had to secure the loose ends of the yarn strips again on the back, but first I glued a piece of yarn on the tip of the letters, masking the edges of the cardboard.

Then, on the back - secured the yarn ends in place - with glue.

The final products left us very pleased ...