Yarn bowl

Feeling crafty yesterday morning (thank you, Allison Sadler and “make-it-sewcial Mondays“), I decided to do what I have been wanting to do for a lóng time: use the yarn ends I’ve been saving up for ages and turn them into a bowl. Yes, that’s right, a bowl!

I came across this fabulous idea months and months ago on the wonderful blog of Elisabeth Andrée and pinned it to my “DIY/crafts Pinterest board“.
Time to open the pin and get started!
Elisabeth Andrée’s tutorial links back to yet another beautiful blog, by Carolyn and gives you the “recipe” to make the paste with which the yarn ends are sort of glued together to form a bowl. On Carolyn’s blog you can see that you don’t necessarily need yarn ends, you can very well use long strands of yarn and stick to one color as well.

You’ll be perfectly fine, just following Elisabeth Andrée’s and Carolyn’s instructions, but I just want to show you how things looked here when I got started and moreover, show you the result! I’ll be pretty much bombarding this post with photos, but that way you’ll get the picture – ;) – even better!

So, I got everything I needed: yarn ends …..
                    
as well as the ingredients to make the paste with …..

Then, following the “recipe“, I mixed and cooked the paste and let it cool …..

Prepared the bowl(s) by covering the outside(s) with plastic wrap, making sure to cover all of the bowl(s) …..
Placed the bowl(s) on aluminum foil (so the paste could safely drip) …..
After all these preparations, it was time to  p l a y!
I picked up a handful of yarn ends, got another handful of the paste and mixed them in my hands, making sure every piece of yarn was soaked with the paste. Then little by little I covered my first bowl with the gooey yarn ends, feeling like some sort of sculptor, really.

After all this sculpting, the hardest part came …… finding the patience to let them dry! When I had finished my first (big) bowl, I very quickly got the feeling that I might have sculpted a bit to thick a layer onto the bowl. Since there were enough yarn ends ànd paste left, I prepared another, smaller bowl and made sure its layer of yarn-paste was considerably thinner. The first bowl is drying nicely, but is still not totally dry – after almost 48 hours!
However, the second, smaller bowl with the thinner layer was completely dry this morning and so the exciting task of removing the yarn shell from the bowl started. Nervous moment, I can tell you ……
But, the bowl came off nicely though, after which I carefully removed the plastic wrap from the inside of the bowl and T A D A H!!

Isn’t it beAUtiful? I’m ridiculously happy with the way it turned out!
So, go ahead, give it a try – you won’t regret it! It’s really easy (the drying part is the toughest, honestly) and I’m sure you lovely yarn loving people will get a kick out of this too. Oh ….. and please share photos of your yarn ends bowl, I would love to see all of your unique creations!
Happy crafting!

Love,
Marianne