Disillusioned DIY: 4 Fun Pinterest Projects & 1 Craft To Avoid

I have a Pinterest problem. It's not like I really needed another reason to be on the Internet, but the universe still gave me one. It has made me want to cook a lot more, but my house is also starting to look like a bizarre "trash to treasure" experiment gone mad. 

Since I don't volunteer or help the community in other ways, I thought I could at least help someone out there from drowning in pins and boards. Here are a few of my successes and failures in the DIY realm*:

1. Dutch Oven Bread

I had a hard time believing this bread was actually going to turn out, but it did. I am now obsessed. I've made four loaves, and we've already eaten two. Admittedly, we like to add cheese at my house, but it's been quite the tasty adventure. The SO thinks I'm a domestic goddess, and my new Le Creuset oven (not a cheap investment, but worth it) looks really pretty in the kitchen even when I'm not using it. I am very pleased.

Bread

2. Wine Bottle Lamps

Despite my rather perilous learning curve, this tutorial was incredibly helpful. I've made about seven of these. (Wow, this is starting to sound like I have a lot more time on my hands than I do.) Here are a couple of suggestions:

A) Do not buy traditional Christmas lights or the lights from Big Lots. You will spend too much time putting those lights in the bottles. I actually ended up pushing each individual light into the bottle and had an incredibly sore hand. Buy LED string lights. They are thin and much easier to work with.

B) If you're don't think too much about science like me, you might have an urge to clean your wine bottles right after drilling the hole. Don't. The wine bottle will be very hot from the drilling, and what happens to hot glass when it comes into contact with cold water? It cracks. Fooled by the laws of nature yet again.

Wine_bottle_lamp

3. Coin Jewelry

This was another handy tutorial. If I was you, I'd actually follow all of the instructions. Instead of stabilizing my drilling with a wood block, I decided to use a phone book because it was nearby. This was not the best idea. Still, the holes were easy to drill, and I can finally do something with all of the foreign money I've saved from trips throughout the years. 

I put some coins on a key ring instead of a jewelry ring, including one coin each from Japan, Thailand and Europe to represent the around-the-world trip a BFF and I took in 2003. It makes for a far more elegant souvenir than I expected.

Coin_jewelry

 4. The T-Shirt Scarf

Sometimes the fact that I can't stand clutter runs afoul of my Southern sentimentality. On my first date with the SO, we were given free t-shirts by the concert venue. The t-shirts are hideous. They look like hypercolor without actually being hypercolor and advertise a local car dealership. The only sizes available were large and extra large. Nothing is attractive about these t-shirts. (Stuff like this happens when your first date is to a Def Leppard concert.) However, when the SO tried to throw out his t-shirt, it spawned a long conversation, the crux of which was, "How can you even think about getting rid of something that represents such a special day in our lives?"

I lost this argument because of the ugly factor, and it spawned a DIY t-shirt projects hunt. Enter the scarf. While this isn't my favorite project of all time, I do like it. Plus, the red circles come from the aforementioned t-shirt so I feel like I have a piece of that day without pouting that my boyfriend won't wear a Toyota t-shirt when we go out and about.

Tshirt_scarf

Now, even though I don't really like to sew, sometimes a complete "no sew" project looks too ragged to me. While I didn't sew the loops that make up the bulk of the scarf, I did sew the bits of t-shirt that connect the loops for a somewhat neater look. (Looking back at the original post, I now realize how much prettier her scarf was than mine. Sigh.)

Tshirt_scarf_detail

5. It Is Not Easy To Cut Glass At Home

I feel like I've said this 1,000 times by now and people probably wonder why I'm oddly bitter towards glass crafts, but this undertaking was one of the biggest pains I've ever encountered. Take a moment to look at these glasses:

Wine_bottle_glasses

Now let me mention the 50 broken wine bottles I threw out in various pieces to get here. I saw this video and thought I was set. Clearly, I was not. Also, these are my three best examples, and you can see that they're not completely even. 

To think that I did all of this to avoid paying for a $29.99 set of the exact same glasses makes me question my decision-making skills. (The scorer was $25.) If you value your sanity, and the unbroken skin on your hands, leave this one alone. 

* I never claimed I was a photographer. 

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