Yarn Challenged

The process of getting the girl room together has begun. The construction starts this week, so I thought it was a good time to start some of the decoration projects. The fabrics for Rhi's quilt have been purchased, washed and ironed (I felt the need to list all of that since it's ALL that I've done on it), pillows have been made and then a few odds and ends have been started.

One of the items that Rhi requested was a letter R. I have a cute little wall art planned and it fit right into the idea. I decided to go with a yarn wrapped letter. I have seen them everywhere and they seem easy enough...hahahaha. That is me laughing at myself. Apparently, yarn is not my medium. It went poorly. So poorly I thought I'd do a tutorial. A tutorial of how NOT to do this.

So, I started off with my letter and yarn.

A spot of glue to hold the beginning yarn in place. But then I couldn't fully cover the bottom. Hmmm...so I added a little more glue and then some more. Ah. It is ready. So I moved up the letter. It was going well. Until. Wait. How do I get all this yarn through here? I know I am smarted than this. No, really, I have to be smarter than this....At this point I was regretting not naming Rhiannon Olivia or Odette. Those are great names. But really, how do I fix this?

So I cut it. And kept cutting little yarn balls of the red yarn so that I could get around all of the turns and outsmart the stinkin' thing. It worked like a charm. Do this. At the beginning not when you get stuck and angry.

 At this point, things were going great. I got it all wrapped. All the way up to the next turn...until I turned it around. Wait....hold the phone. How did I manage to cover all of the front and miss this big old gap here in the back? This is lame. RECOVER..

So I worked my way around and got the the point of going around the last turn when I thought, why don't I wrap from the bottom of the R and through the center in order to avoid any glue on the bottom? Hindsight is 50/50 folks. Do that. Not that gluey mess that I started with.

Really, it didn't turn out horrible. It is not one of those beautiful letters that I see all over Pinterest but it is usable. I'm thinking of adding some rosettes staggering up the left side. Hide some flaws and add some pretty. We will see.

 So, basically, don't do what I did. Here are my tips for you.

1. Name your children names that start with an O or maybe an L. That would be ideal.
2. Paint the letter first, so anything showing through is not so In-Your-Face obvious.
3. Start off by cutting a bunch of yarn balls to easily wrap around all of crazy lame turns.
4. If you do have a letter like an R start wrapping vertical and then hide that by wrapping horizontally to hide it. Does that make sense?
5. And if you are yarn challenged, like I am, go to www.etsy.com and order a stinkin' letter. There are some really pretty ones on there.