Belated Paper Crafting

Oh hi, internet. It's midnight, and I should really be asleep, but instead I'm blogging. It's all your fault!

Anyways, I've been doing a Google Reader audit over the last few days. Do you have way too many blogs on your reader, like me? You know you have a problem when Google just gives up counting and says you have 1000 + unread posts. Gah. It was incredibly cleansing to delete those that I'm no longer interested in, or that have no new posts.

The real fun of it was catching up on some of my favorite blogs, particularly the crafty ones. I had missed a lot of great holiday crafts! It's probably just as well, as I was very busy experimenting with new recipes, yum. But you see, I have this obsession with Christmas tree ornaments. They're small, you can hang them, I don't know, I just love them alright!? So it was fitting that I found this great tutorial over at How About Orange (great name right? I command you to go over there immediately! but come back, okay?)

It was so simple! A great alternative to TV on a Wednesday night.

Stripey UFO with menacing hand shadow, eeeee!

I did a few things differently. Namely, I used buttons instead of beads (you know the ones that come with clothing, except if you're like me, you never label them and have no idea what in the world they belong to).

I discovered that a penny sized paper circle (in blue) was too close in size to the button, so I traced around a quarter instead.

I sewed the button to the circle. I cut up the strips (using my rotary cutter and mat for something other than fabric for the first time), folded the strips in half, and threaded through each strip towards the end. I then started threading through the other ends, starting with the FIRST strip that I threaded before. This instruction seemed counter-intuitive - looking at the middle photo below, it makes more sense that you would start with the white strip to the far right, rather than the yellow one to the far left.

But I dutifully persevered, and ended with this:

Which, is exactly what happened to How About Orange: a gap on one side. it's impossible to avoid - the strips of paper descend like a spiral staircase, only Escher could make them match up.

Ahah, I decided, she must have done it wrong - if I thread it the way my instincts told me, it will be nice and symmetrical.

Well, hubris, etcetera:

Ahem.

It doesn't work that way at all. The strips don't fan out nicely like they should, they just nestle, and flail. Bah.

But! I sort of worked it out, by tying a big knot on either side of the stacks of strips, so they didn't separate along the string. Am I making any sense? Probably not. Nevertheless, that seemed to reduce the gap.

The tree is down, so it can live on the chandelier for a while.

So, I might be crazy for making ornaments in January. But we all know how bleak it can get this time of year. December is so full of the newness of winter, in its fresh, invigorating way. Christmas celebrates the season, with the snowmen, and the hot chocolate, and the matching gloves and hat wrapped under the tree.  But then January comes around, and we're faced with 2 1/2 more months of not-so-novel-anymore hybernation. I say, it's time to keep the joy alive, in the form of oh-so-addictive paper craft.

Which is why I made some snowflakes this morning at work.