If you have read my A to Z Challenge at all, you know that I am no quitter.
I have replicated the Japanese bagel head which included me pinning an actual bagel to my forehead.
I brushed my teeth with activated charcoal to see if it really whitened teeth (it doesn't).
I helped 16 five year olds make kazoos out of toilet paper tubes and taught them how to play a song.
I made (and ate) brownies made from black beans and avocados.
I even attempted to make edible bowls by dipping a balloon into melted white chocolate. When the first balloon exploded, showering me and my kitchen with liquid white chocolate, did I give up? No! I tried it again and again and again and again, each time with the same results. THEN I gave up.
Not today.
Here's the pin:
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| http://www.craftionary.net/ guest-post-paper-basket/ |
Simple enough. Weave strips of folded newspaper into a basket.
I started out the way I do all projects and recipes, with plenty of confidence. I even
I cut the strips of paper. The pinner said to cut them in two-column wide strips, a column being 1-3/4" wide. JUST SAY CUT THEM IN THREE AND A HALF INCH STRIPS.
I folded them in half, then in half again. And again.
I started weaving the pieces together to form the bottom of the basket.
I even had a little (unsolicited) help with the weaving....
I finished the bottom, got the pieces scooted together to make a square, and wove a piece of hemp string around it to help secure the basket bottom.
Then I got to the part of the directions where the sides of the basket get woven and read this:
"Now off to the difficult part." Shit.
I found the instructions and the accompanying pictures to be so poorly done that I did a Google search for a better site and was led to THIS site. Shit.
I did my level best to weave the sides together per the instructions given.
Kept trying.
Kept trying.
Kept. Trying.
After two and a half hours and a thick coating of newsprint on my fingers, I did this:
N is for not going to happen.
Pinterest fail.
I took two basket weaving classes and have exactly two baskets because it took so much effort and more than one person (maybe with skill it only takes one.) Yours was pretty impressive ...you got pretty far! I found i really had to bastardize the instructions to get it to work at all!
ReplyDeleteI can make a great basket bottom, but that's where it stopped. Maybe I could make potholders?
DeleteThe directions made NO sense. You almost wonder if it was done on purpose...
aww i was so hoping it would work - it looked good with what you had.
ReplyDeletei find that visual instructions on you tube help me alot.
:)
It was a really cute basket, too! But then what do you do with a basket made from newspaper? Anything you put in it would get newsprint on it.
DeleteI remember folding and weaving gum wrappers into something like that. A basket in the basket, I like it.
ReplyDeleteI did that, too! You were supposed to make it as long as your boyfriend was tall. I didn't have a boyfriend, but if I HAD had one, he would have been over 6 feet tall :)
DeleteN is for Not Going to Happen:) Love it.
ReplyDeleteThat basket looks pretty challenging.
You'd think I would learn a lesson about reading all the directions before I start a project, but no.
DeleteIt looked pretty good in that wastebasket up there. I think I might try this, but I am pretty sure I never will.
ReplyDeleteFinding Eliza
The wastebasket was the perfect place for it!
DeleteThe Museum of Modern Art used to have a little clutch in the gift shop made of newspaper or gum wrappers. It was a bazillion dollars. Now I know why I never tried to replicate it!
ReplyDeleteKeep it up, you are rocking this! jean
That would be one of many reasons. I can do the gum wrapper thing, although I can only make a chain.
DeleteTHANK YOU, JEAN!
I would have tossed mine too! I do love recycled crafts though and once made a "bowl" out of magazine strips (rolled into circles). I enjoyed the craft but it took forever to finish.
ReplyDelete@weekendsinmaine
Weekends in Maine
I saw a basket made with rolled strips of paper! Had to weave the damn thing instead...
DeleteI HATE it when the directions are not complete--- it's like how am I supposed to create/do/make something if you cannot actually tell me HOW to do it. Bummer, the picture looked very cool and your bottom *snark* turned out great!
ReplyDeleteI truly think it's smoke and mirrors for so much of this stuff on Pinterest. I think some of it faked.
DeleteYeah, I thought I had a great bottom, too! (tee hee!)