Feeling Better and Gettin' Crafty!

Hi there!

It's been a few days since I last posted and I wanted to reassure you that my stomach bug moved through fast and furious. I was feeling a lot better by Wednesday, but was behind on things I wanted/needed to get done, so I caught up on those. I fully planned on posting yesterday, but had a slight detour in my plans due to estimates we are getting on upgrading our electrical panel and furnace. I called to make an appointment to find out the guys could actually come about an hour later. That took up time I planned on using to finish up the projects I've been working on. No decisions have been made on what which company we will go with as the prices between the two estimates we've gotten so far are so extreme from one another that Steve wants another estimate to see if there is a happy medium.

I just finished up my latest crafty efforts and wanted to share with you. You might remember a week or so ago I wrote that I wanted to crochet some egg motifs to make a garland/swag for the porch. I wasn't sure if I would use worsted weight yarn or thread crochet. Well, I made one egg with the thread crochet and it came out so tiny, I nixed that idea right away. So, I crocheted 20 eggs in 5 different colors. Before the guys showed up I was working on putting up the swag and discovered that what I feared might happen did. The eggs are too large/heavy to work the way I originally planned. So I had to switch to Plan B, only I didn't have a Plan B! LOL I fiddled and futzed for awhile yesterday and then gave up for the day. This morning I had an idea to try a roll of tulle and after lots more fiddling and futzing, I'm happy with the results. Whew, a lot of jabber, but it's been a few days and I feel sort of chatty. LOL So, here's what I ended up with:

Jeanne Tomshack 2010

Jeanne Tomshack 2010

Jeanne Tomshack 2010

I first tried attaching the eggs to each other using white organdy ribbon, but it just didn't look all that great. I ended up cutting a long length of the tulle and tying it around the top of the post. I let it fall and tied it again behind the railing. Then I used straight pins to just pin the eggs to the tulle. I was a little concerned that the weight of the eggs would drag the tulle down, so I tied another piece behind the yellow eggs (which was about halfway). They float a little in the breeze and look nice, I think. Then I attempted to use the rest of the eggs to create a garland of sorts on the railing. I tried tying them in all sorts of ways and even took a quick trip to the Dollar Tree and Michaels for an inexpensive green, leafy garland. I found a couple at Michaels but they weren't on sale and I guess Michaels now only allows you to use one coupon per day. They used to let you use a Michaels and a Joann's/Hobby Lobby one at the same time. It irked me that they changed the policy, so I passed on getting them. I tied them in a different way when I got home and thought it looked decent. I have four extra eggs that I'm not sure what to do with, but that's okay.

On that quick trip to the Dollar Tree, I found this:

Jeanne Tomshack 2010

And a roll of ribbon, so the trip wasn't in vain. LOL

After I got back and finished fiddling with these eggs, I started fiddling with some different eggs! I saw this idea on a blog (of course) but now I can't find the particular blog I found it on. So, I did a search and found this site which explains how to do the project the way that the gal did on the blog I can't find now. I took the idea and did my own thing as you can see here:

Jeanne Tomshack 2010

The directions say to use a piece of cardboard. I had a foam wreath from the Dollar Tree handy(and not a good sized piece of cardboard), so I decided to use the wreath form instead. The eggs I got at the Dollar Tree (18 in a package, I bought 3 pkgs). I hadn't finished hot gluing the eggs on at this point in the picture. I added some to the inner part of the wreath and glued a bunch sticking out from these two rows. I used a low heat glue gun, one of those small ones and a bunch of glue sticks. After I was done with that, I started adding some crinkled paper shreds that I had in my stash. I just grabbed a little wad, add some glue and stuck it down with either my fingers or the flat end of a pen. A little ribbon bow here and some trimming there when all was done and I ended up with this:

Jeanne Tomshack 2010

Which I put here:

Jeanne Tomshack 2010

And it makes me smile to look at my porch.

*Ü*

Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope you have a fantastic Friday! Thanks, too, for all your wonderful support when I was feeling puny. Oh, and for agreeing that Jessica made a pretty darn cute Piggy #2 in her Three Piggy Opera performance.