I am no stranger to the world of internet craft inspiration. I have been a longtime lurker on craftgawker and craftster. I avidly follow blogs like regretsy, join groups like April’s Army, and have been a serious pinterest and stumbleupon addict for a very long time, frequenting the crafting boards. And, of course, I keep a close eye on the Pintester, who helps me avoid some very tempting pins (I think I’m going to put off trying to cut my own glass for a while yet). For this reason when Sonja put out the call for fellow testers, how could I resist?

I’ve decided to create this Handmade Yarn Feather from Blue Sky Confections’ Jenn’s tutorial. You can find the pin to it on my Inspiration board, just to prove I found it on Pinterest.

According to the pin, you need these things.

Well not really. You need “cloth stem wire”. I just had regular old wire and I figured, meh, I’ll make it work.

The wire needs to be cloth stemmed to keep the yarn from sliding off. This is my solution to that: double back and twist to provide some texture.

You’re also supposed to have liquid starch, which I didn’t. I figured if it was stiffening we were after I could just use white Elmer’s glue, watered down a bit (which turns it into mod podge basically.) Of course we only had Elmer’s gel glue, which is and always has been weird, but I decided to take a chance.

Honestly I just didn’t want to go out shopping. In order to save space a bit, and because Jenn shares much better pictures of her process, which I’m sure works a bit better than mine, here is my process in thumbnail photos.

Wrap, tie on pieces of yarn, twine or thread, and glue, then trim. Notable changes I made: I didn’t cut my embroidery floss to 3″, instead ending up with probably 2″ pieces because I am cheap and didn’t want to use all my embroidery floss on this. Also, I worked the glue in with my fingers and then hung it upside down after shaping it into roughly a feather shape, instead of using liquid bleach. Even though my feather turned out alright, next time I’m definitely going to make more effort to follow her directions.

All in all, here’s mine.

I like the variation of color in mine, but hers are just so much more stunning. She probably put more effort into them than I did though… my bad. Still, I’m going to call this a success, and with a little more effort on my part next time this could be a cool project for the future.

It’s at this point that I should let you know that I’ve dabbled in Pinterest inspiration before, to varying degrees of success. Most of what I’ve posted about has been a success, honestly, but there has definitely been a range. Here’s a list.

There’s my favorite scone recipe in the world, which is wonderful with or without raisins. Also my absolute favorite cake, which is gigantic, and I make a point to make myself for my birthday. And then there are the food pins which just don’t work.

I have made some really great earrings (Pinterest images on the left, Mine on the right.)

I’ve dabbled in adapting many products as well. And though I haven’t posted about them for various reasons, I have successfully completed these pins as well.

This is by no means everything I’ve dabbled with. I’d strongly urge you to check out the rest of my blog, or you can find my boards at Pinterest.com/dembo124, which has a special board for this blog, as well as several inspiration boards. You can find many more wonderful Pinterest inspired projects here. (This is the URL, in case that hyperlink doesn’t work. http://pintester.com/2013/05/the-pintester-movement-craft-all-the-things)

All images are linked back to their sources, or my original post.