A Beautiful Mess: Centerpiece Version 1.0

The mops boards on Pinterest are flooded with messy but beautiful centerpiece ideas. I really like the all the posts with the stiffened string/yarn. I saw it worked around balloons for egg or ball shapes, wrapped around bowls, even fashioned into a vase. This is my first attempt at creating a yarn nest. My husband says he thinks it looks more like a wreath. I of course informed him that he thought wrong :-) 

Making the Nest/Wreath...

First things first. After browsing over the various related pins, I gathered up everything I thought I would need to complete the centerpiece vision in my head. I decided to go the starch and flour route to stiffen the yarn; however, I am not 100% happy with the end results. When I work on Centerpiece Version 2.0 I am going to spend the extra dough and get actual fabric stiffener. 

My Supplies:

Pool Noodle

Liquid starch

Flour

Yarn 

Painters Tape

Quart sized mason jar

Spray paint

Sample pot of pink paint

Cling wrap (I ended up not using this)

Not Pictured

Toothpicks

Duck Tape

      

I wanted my nest to fit fairly tightly around the mason jar. I wasn't able to find a wreath form (okay, maybe my husband wasn't so off the mark on the wreath comment) that was the right size, so I made my own. At first I tried using some of the 97 cents plumbing tubing from Lowes, but the size wasn't big enough to keep the tubing from warping. Although it didn't work for this project, this less than a dollar find is still great for making a door sized wreath and way cheaper than buying a foam wreath frame at the craft stores.

Since the plumbing tubing didn't work out, I had to think of another way to fashion my own wreath form (yeah, I'm just calling it a wreath now. Don't tell my husband, please). I thought of making some homemade playdough and creating a wreath that way, but while picking up a few other supplies I saw the pool noodles and inspiration struck. The painters tape was not exactly great at holding my wreath form together, but thankfully my fancy toothpicks did the trick :-)

My original plan was to wrap the wreath in cling wrap. Of course my roll was almost empty, so I pulled out my handy dandy extra roll of duck tape. I love the way it turned out. This little wreath is definitely tough enough to make it through the crafting of the all seven of our centerpieces. 

I saw two different schools of thought on wrapping the string: Lots of strips vs. One long strip
So I tried both ways...
I prefer spooling the yarn and doing a couple super long strands versus a bunch of strands :-)
Oh and I mixed one cup of starch with half a cup of flour, but I do NOT recommend this method.

I used almost the whole skein of yarn.

Next up... Painting the Jars

 I added strips of painters tape and spray painted the jar white. Then I poured in some of the pink paint and swirled it all around the inside of the jar, as well as letting some paint run down the outside too. In my head I had the image of a beautiful jar with some messy paint running down the sides. In reality it just looked like a hot mess. It was really frustrating and I had to step away for a little bit and regroup. 

 

 In the end I decided to try a couple different paint styles on the jars and I am pretty happy with how they turned out. The striped one is actually very pretty without the addition of paint drips, but my personal favorite is the plain white jar with the paint drips. The two looks together was just too much. The dots are nice as well. We might do a different jar pattern for each color table. 

All in all, I think these are a great start to what is going to be a great year at MOPS <3



I almost forgot... The reason I do not recommend the starch and flour method for making the yarn nest/wreath (or whatever you prefer to call it)...

I feel like this method really dulled out the pink colors of the yarn. I know it was already a powder pink color, but now it's like super super powdery. I picked up a pretty big bottle of fabric stiffener to try for Centerpiece Version 2.0 :-)