Day Twenty-Four

So for the Pintester Movement 2.0 , I attempted to re-create Sonja's grocery bag basket (that she originally got from this blog post) last night.  It did not go as planned.  In true Pintester fashion, I did not actually have the necessary ingredients.  I lacked paper grocery bags, I used the next best thing...brown paper lunch  bags!  I mean, they're brown and bags like paper grocery bags so really, what's the big deal?

I cut the bottoms off of the bags, since they were a thicker.  After converting 1.75 inches into centimeters (roughly 4.4 cm if anyone is curious) I measured and marked the bags. It took me about four bags to get the right amount of strips, I think it was 18?  Then I cut them up into strips. And everything went downhill from there.  

As I mentioned before, I did not have the right ingredients for this pin.  That included glue but that didn't matter to me, because I had tape...or so I thought.  I could have sworn I packed tape with me, but after tearing apart my room for half an hour looking for this mythical roll of tape, I came up empty handed.  Thus-ly, I had to get crafty.  For my birthday, I had gotten this kind of crappy top coat that was too thick and kind of sticky.  Well, glue is thick and sticky, right? RIGHT?  So I used the nail polish as glue.  Despite being hella smelly, it worked(ish).

The next problem came when the instructions said to hold the strips into thirds.  HA.  HAHAHA.  Folding paper in a specific style is my weakness.  I just folded the strips so they all looked even enough in width.

Next came the weaving!  It was not such an epic fail.  I wish I had made them a little tighter but it worked.  Then I nail polished the corners together and waited for them to dry.  Some corners needed a little help staying down, so I put my jar'o'coins on top of them to help.

After the corners were dried I was hit by the struggle bus full force.  I had no clue how to incorporate the long strips into the sides.  So, I decided to get some assistants, disappointing chips I will not buy again and peanut M&M's which were not a disappointment.  Gurl's gotta eat.

In hind site, I should have made the long strips longer and folded them too.  Buuuuut the instructions didn't say to, and I didn't think to last night so I tried to weave them in big.  One long strip didn't go around the whole thing, and when I tried to incorporate another one, it just didn't.  The fact that I also didn't really understand how to weave in the long strips also didn't help, despite reading both blog posts.  The thin strips wouldn't stay up, the nail polish was failing, I was frustrated and I needed to get some sleep because I had to get up early to catch my bus.

That there is my finished product.  Can you hear it screaming in pain? I can. I put it out of its misery and laid it to rest in my trash can, but it is still watching me with disgust.  I may re-visit this with tape and the long strips folded thinly, buuuut it probably won't happen. I'm too lazy and I don't want to fold anymore paper.  No mas origami por favor (unless I am told the secret of incorporating the long strips).