This is a really simple and cheap craft I started making as gifts for friends and family. I got the idea from
Family Chic, a wonderful blog with tons of other ideas. All you need is wire, yarn, a set of piliers and an idea as to what word you'd like to make (which might be the hardest part when making them for others.
A couple quick tips:
1. Choose yarn that's subsantially thick. Fluffy or fuzzy are great but feathery can be a pain.
2. Be consistant with how tight your pulling it. For "Maia Claire" I kept it loose which really the yarn and the size of the word I wanted called for. (Which btw was done with a yarn that changes color, I haven't attempted to do any with multiple yarns.) Whereas you'll see "Peace" below which was smaller with a completely different type of yarn so I kept it pulled super tight.
3. Always cut off too much wire... you never know when you'll have to reshape the wire. For example, when your "a" looks like a "o" (always create the a's with the tail on top like you see in type and not how most of us would print). Obviously cut off the access wire before cover it in yarn at the end.
4. When shaping the wire, realize that there cannot be any closed circles. Understand the yarn has to go around each part of the wire and you wont be cutting it off from the ball to feed it through. Thus, while you can use yarn to shut a circle (like in an "e") you cannot use the wire itself (notice the "a"s in Maia above).
To start and finish use piliers to create a little hook that you can squeeze together once the thread is in place. Below are 2 more completed examples.
Easy trick to save bucks. Liquid soap clearly has a lot of water in it, but bar soap can be annoying to use. The solution is simple, get a one litre bottle, with an openning large enough for a bar of soap (or be prepared to chop up a bar of soap), fill it up with water and drop in a bar of soap (chopped or grated for faster results). I stirred mine at least once a day and after 4 days pourred enough out to fill a soap dispenser. Voila!
