No commitment Halloween wreath plus an almost funny story

Now that it is 10 days before Halloween, you've probably seen enough wreaths to last you until next year.

But humor me, kay? Because I like mine.

I love the colors (purple is a GREAT Halloween color!) I love the polka dots, I love the arglye-ish wrap around ribbon thing I did. Love the spider web ribbon tied in bows. It's just cool.

But why is it called "no commitment?"

Because not one thing is cut, glued, or permanently altered in any kind of way.

See? That's all pinned down!

Let me tell you a story.

It's 11pm. Amie is blogging, David is playing some kind of MMORPG. Suddenly.

"THAT'S IT!!!!"

David sees his wife suddenly stand up, put her laptop down, and stomp over to her craft area. (Area, not room. sad face.) She starts pulling random things off shelves, digging through the mess under the air hockey table, and plops herself down on the floor with a big pile of stuff.

".........honey? What are you doing?"

"Making a wreath!!!"

"....why?"

"Because it's Halloween!!!"

"Whatever you want honey."

You see, all of our Halloween decorations are in a storage unit 20 miles away. And to find a chunk of time long enough to drive down, pick it all up, drive back, and put it all up is kind of impossible. So we decided to forgo getting all of it and just do without decorations.

I immediately regretted that decision. Halloween is my FAVE-O-RITE holiday. How can I NOT decorate? I tried to suppress the urge. I mean come on, we live in a basement. All our stuff is crammed into, onto, and under all our furniture. We don't have defined spaces, it's mostly just one big room. In short: it's really hard to decorate. No mantels, one window, no front door, no shelves that aren't completely full of crap. Ugh.

I failed at suppressing. I just snapped at late last week and grabbed a whole bunch of stuff. Two rolls of black tulle, a roll of orange polka dot ribbon, purple polka dot ribbon, spider web ribbon, and an old wooden wreath form. I was about to grab my glue gun when I thought "Wait....Amie you HAVE a Halloween wreath. You shouldn't make another one."

Yes, but I don't have it HERE. I compromised my challenging myself to make the wreath without cutting or gluing anything. So essentially I could just unwind everything, roll it back up, and use all the materials for something else.

And I succeeded! I tied the tulle around the wreath and wrapped away. I taped the ribbon down in the back and wrapped that around too, pinning it when I was done. Did the same for the purple ribbon. And I took all three yards of that spider web ribbing and tied over a dozen little bows from one continuous strip. Pinned those down too. BOO YA.

Essentially, I can take the whole thing apart and have perfectly usable materials again. But we both no that probably won't happen, mostly because I am very lazy I like it too much. Plus it was totally free, which is awesome.

Oh, that weird mess of orange ribbon at the top WAS the hang-y thing-y. But it didn't work so we wrapped it  up. Ignore it please.

Have you ever made a non commitment craft before? Share with me!

Tutorial Tuesday- Completely free Anthro knock off!

Note to self: when you schedule a post, schedule it for10 AM and not PM. Sorry folks!

Yeah, you read that right. A completely 100% free Anthro knock off! You're going to love this. I was perusing Anthroplogie's website, like I always do when I'm procrastinating, and my eye caught this little number.

{Pidgeon Pea Necklace from Anthropologie}

I saw it and thought "Wow, those look a lot like those paper beads I used to make!" I clicked on the description...and OMG. They ARE paper beads! I practically ran to get scissors!

You will need:

• An old magazine
• Glue stick
• Scissors
• Thin paint brush
• Yarn

Yeah, that's it! I am 99% certain that all of you have these things lying around, which would make this FREE for you too! I chose to use a magazine to make the beads because the website boasted a "glossy" finish, and most magazines have glossy-ish pages. (No, I don't speak Spanish. My husband's cute Cuban grandmother gave it to me because she thought I would like it...forgetting that I don't speak Spanish.) Plus, you can get a great range of colors! You could use scrapbook paper too if you want,but don't use anything as thick as cardstock. Trust me, just don't.

Tear out a few pages. I didn't even use all of these. I recommend using advertisement pages. They have lots of color and very few words, so they work nicely for the beads.

Cut out triangle-ish shapes. Thick at the bottom, thin at the top. Cut out a lot! Cut them thin, think, short, long, and don't worry about cutting straight.

I didn't cut them totally pointy because the really thin pieces have trouble sticking.

Bust out that glue stick and start gluing! But not at the bottom, start about an inch up, otherwise you'll glue the bead to the paintbrush and it will SUCK to get it off.

Start rolling your gluey strip around the paintbrush, starting with the glue-free, thicker bottom. Roll loosely at first, then slowly roll a bit tighter. If you roll too tightly around the paintbrush the bead will be hard to get off.

Roll and roll and roll. (Wow, my nails aren't horrendous! I think this is a KC&A first!!)

Gently pull the finished bead off the paintbrush! Tadahhhh!!

Roll again.

And roll and roll and roll! Get really sticky fingers and yell at the cat for eating a bead, but then forgive her when she rubs her cute furry face against your leg. I doubled and tripled up on strips for some of the beads to give them different sizes and thicknesses.

If you're beads are being finicky and need some help, pinch in the round part of a clothespin to hold it down while it dries. (Am I a genius for figuring that out or what??)

When you're all done, string them on a piece of yarn. Tie it off.

Yai!! You did it!

Go outside to model it. Realize you wore a terrible outfit for the necklace and try and look happy about it. See that your arm is reflecting in your sunglasses.

Try to take the sunglasses off and blind yourself because you really can't see without them. Give up on modeling the necklace.

Don't forget to see where I link up! :)