Trendy Twine Suncatcher

When thinking about my next Trendy Twine Design Team project, I thought what is the craziest way you could use twine? Probably as a suncatcher, right? I mean, it's not the most see through material on the planet. But could it be done? After a little research I found a cool way to get more use out of my stockpile of twine. Let's take a look at how to make a suncatcher with my favorite twine.

First, gather your materials - fabric stiffener, twine, pattern, foam brush, glue, and wax paper. I forgot to add the glue bottle and stamp to the above picture, so pretend they are there. I used the big background mitten stamp from Unity Stamp Co. for the suncatcher's shape. You want to use the twine as the outline for your catcher and to hold all the glue in. Start by putting the pattern under the wax paper (shiny side up) and lay down a very thin line of glue tracing the pattern. This is just to keep the twine down on the paper and keep it's shape till you coat it with the stiffener. Let dry for about 10 minutes. Then using a foam brush, sponge on the stiffener. Soaking the twine but making sure you don't let it leak out around it.

I made two of the mittens for a set. I should have reversed the pattern on the mitten to look like left and right, but I am lazy. I will just flip one over. Once you are sure the twine is stuck, fill in the entire mitten with glue. I used just your run of the mill cheap school glue. I don't know if it is glue specific but expect some shrinkage and Mod Podge doesn't work so well. You may want to take a pin and pop any bubbles you see now. I forgot to pop them and they show up. Let these dry till they are totally clear. I left them alone for three days. They may have been done earlier but didn't check only because I got busy.

Once they are dry, gently peel them off the wax paper. Because of the shrinkage, they might curl a bit. I kind of liked it. It gave my mittens a little style. If it was a different shape, you may not want any curl. So just be careful when peeling it from the paper. Peeling the paper away instead may prevent that. I wanted to give a little color to my mittens, so I used a pink marker. I colored in a criss cross pattern to mimic knit for extra interest. 

If you want a string to connect the mittens for hanging or just looks, take the stiffener to extra twine. As you see here I also made cute little pom-poms. I tried for weeks to get a nice bright picture of these hanging on my kitchen window with the sun shining through, but as my luck would have it, no sunny days. My pictures were coming out terrible. These look like they are laying down. They are not. I rigged up my light box and hung them on a background and placed a light behind it. It doesn't give the full suncatcher effect, but I hope you can still see the nice transparency to them. I hung them here and on my window with glue dots, they are very secure.

Here is a closer look. They really look quite pretty in the kitchen even though we haven't see the sun in weeks. They make me happy just looking at them. 

Hope you enjoyed today's project and my tutorial made sense. If you have any questions, hit me up in the comments and I will get back as soon as possible. Have a great day and happy crafting!

Supplies:

Watermelon Taffy Trendy Twine

Big Background Mitten by Unity Stamp Co.

Kuretake ZIG Art & Graphic Twin marker in pink

Stiffy Fabric Stiffener

wax paper

school glue

foam brush