Ho Ho Hoooooh...shit.

I'm on Pinterest! Which is not a plea for followers, it's how I am going to try and explain my way out of this. I have seen some of the Pinterest testing blogs where beautiful amazing projects turn out looking like absolute crap in the hands of real people. I have a secret weapon, though. I am the craftiest bitch I know. Seriously. I am uncommonly crafty.

So a week or so ago I was having a quick look through endless crockpot recipes, homemade spa products, elf on the shelf (that bastard gives me the squeebie like WHOA), and how to turn a plain ordinary t-shirt into a wedding gown with three safety pins and a scissors and I saw the perfect wreath. I thought "Oh, that would be so charming on my front door!" And then  glory of glories, it was a live link and not yet another ad fakeout. HOT DAMN!

Merry Moss Wreath on BHG.com

I read the supply list. Hmm, I have...none of that shit. No matter! I WILL GET IT. I had a coupon code for Joann.com so I loaded all the supplies into my cart. Except for the 20x20 foam block. They didn't have it. So I googled it. No one seemed to have it. Hmm. Well, once I thought about it, my front door is a french door style, so really...a wreath that wide would look odd. I needed more of a 14-16 incher. Or 12 inches. Because it turns out what i could find was a 12x18 inch block a Amazon. So I got it.

Then I awaited the arrival of my supplies!
They arrived today and I set to work marking out my foam block and whacking off 6 inches straight away. I have no idea what a foam cutter is. I used my offset serrated bread knife. it was perfect for whacking off the big chunk. The center was....well, that's when I think that damn foam cutter would have been handy. I use a smaller knife, the big mamajama bread knife and so many curse words, but I got it done. And it was more or less even. And there was foam debris covering every possible surface in the dining room.

Then I opened up my box from Joanns. And right away I think "wow, these bags of reindeer moss are SMALL, good thing I got three instead of two!" Also: reindeer moss? This shit is not cheap. I know the directions say to stick clumps on. I somehow thought it would be more like...sheety. It's really not. It's really just mushy, moist, weird blobs of green shit. And not all of mine was bright green, some was brown. I could see that I was going to be in trouble because I didn't have enough pins. And I wasn't even sure I had enough of this green shit, either. Also, reindeer moss doesn't smell great, it's like earthy pee. Not as bad as boxwood, but not exactly delightful. Which is exactly how I want my front door to smell right? Vaguely of piss. Awesome.

So when I began to run short of pins I did what any craftonista would do: I grabbed the bottle of glue. Gorilla Glue, I had it out from gluing the sparkly fuckers back on my shower curtain hooks this morning. If you're smarter than I am then right now you are thinking of that vignette in the movie Creepshow where Stephen King gets into alien goop and grows green fur:

I'm not smart. By this time I was near tears, glopping the sides of my foam wreath with a thick layer of glue and then smooshing wads of green crap into it trying to get the best amount of coverage while really trying to stretch the material at the same time. It was very frustrating and I was actually on the verge of tears by the ends. And I have furry green hands.

But I couldn't give up. Mainly because I was in a little bit more than I wanted to spend for a project that was totally wasted. So I kept on smooshing and hoping it would stop sucking. It got a bit better, but it still does not really look like the original. The white spots don't really show in person, the flash high lights them. But my, uh, balls are bigger and it throws it off. I don't hate it, but it's not the vision I had. The size really is just right for my door, though. That part worked out very well, at least.

I am still on the lookout for tinier balls, maybe I will like it better then.