Yep, an Easter Wreath made from all yarn! Even the eggs in the nest are covered in yarn! I originally found this idea from Carolyn's Homework. However, I of course changed it a little bit... Good changes? Bad changes? So, here's the dealio on how I came about all that yarn...plus more. My amazing grandma passed away about a year ago and was a master seamstress/knitter/crafts person (mind you my grandma passed away when she was 79 years-old so the crafts were definitely not modern) and had tons of yarn at all times. Well when she passed away my mom and her sisters helped my grandpa sort through everything and what not and while they were doing that my wonderful mom basically claimed anything crafty that she thought I could find some use out of. A whole big bag of random yarn being included in that. Now, I am definitely not the kind of girl who knits (hello...I just turned 23!) so I was pretty excited when my mom gave it to me because I remembered seeing a wreath made from yarn awhile back so I knew exactly what I was going to do with it! Well, some of it anyways because there literally was a whole big bag of it. However, the original color of this stuff just wasn't going to work for me... It was kind of this light yellow that I wasn't a huge fan of so......I dyed it! With tea! Honestly I was a little nervous just because I had only read about tea dying a couple of times but I bought this tea called National Cup. One girl's blog just said her lace trim turned more red than she wanted after she dyed it using tea so I figured as long as I could find something that seemed a little more brown or even gray I would be in good shape so there was a box of 100 tagless tea bags at Wal Mart for $1.00 so the price was pretty much the deciding factor but lucky for me it was Orange Pekoe & Cut Black Tea kind so...score! So after cutting all my pieces (I did 15 pieces per piece that you'll be braiding which is typically 3 for a normal braid but again, I used thicker yarn so for regular yarn the tutorial I got the idea from used 20 pieces of yarn per piece to braid so 60 pieces total). Have fun cutting all those pieces! I know I did! Just kidding...it really wasn't bad at all and I got it done in no time. One of the blog's I read just said to use one bag of tea for every one cup of water so that's pretty much what I did. FYI - I ended up doing this twice because the tutorial I read said to cut the yarn 4 ft long and that wasn't nearly enough for the size I wanted. I think it was because in the tutorial she used regular yarn and the stuff I used was Maxi-Cord Twisted in 6 mm so it was way thicker and just didn't last as long after braiding it. So I ended up doing it a second time but cutting my yarn 8 ft long instead so the following few pictures are from when I was working with yarn that was 4 ft but you'll get the general idea of dying with tea from them. Just picture the pot almost completely full of tea and yarn and that's about right ; ) I followed the directions on the box on how to make the tea (with using 1 bag for every cup of water) then basically left the yarn in the pot for about 4 hours. I figured the longer I left it in the better and/or darker the yarn would end up. Either way I wasn't worried about it. After emptying the pot I rinsed all the tea out of the yarn with cold water trying to ring and squeeze out as much of it as I went. Then I took all the yarn and wrapped it up in an old towel to press more water out. You'll want to try and do this in advance because waiting for all the yarn to dry was torture. For 8 ft of yarn with 45 pieces it took over 24 hours for it to air dry and it came out being a nice beige/tan color. Perfect! After it was all dry I asked my handy hubby to cut me some wire to make my circle form... I attached it together with electrical tape. Then I separated my pieces of yarn into their 3 chunks of yarn to make the actual braid and tied the tops together with fishing line (the picture kinda shows dark green fishing line but that was for my 4 ft pieces, for the 8 ft pieces I used clear fishing line and liked it much better)... After having a mishap with the 4 ft pieces I might have found a much easier way to do the rest. The following pictures will show all the yarn already attached to the wire circle with more electrical tape but it might work better if you wait on attaching it until you've already braided it all. The way I did it worked just because attached the yarn to the wire circle first then hooking it onto a chair helped keep it still while I braided it but you don't necessarily have to do it that way. For those that have kids you might be able to have them hold it while you do the braiding? Maybe? Basically you just need to get it all braided. You choose how you want to do that but either way you'll have to attach the 3 chunks at the top to begin the braiding process... Now as you can see, I already had mine attached to the wire circle which actually worked really well. And yes I secured the end with an actual pony-tail holder. Next I used one of my hubby's work clamps to hold the top in place better to the wire while I secured the braid around the wire... Now since I used clear fishing line hopefully you can kind of tell where I tied the braid to the wire. I basically tied the individual chunk of the braid that was laying against the wire then I kept attaching those pieces all the way around the wire. After completely attaching the braid to the wire circle I finished it off by braiding 2 of the 3 individual chunks into braids themselves to make the "nest" and help hide the electrical tape I used to secure all the yarn to the wire itself... Once I had each piece in place, in regards to making the "nest" and everything, I secured the "nest" pieces to each other and to the wire with more fishing line while leaving one chunk of the braid hanging down completely. like the yarn eggs? The eggs were pretty easy, the bigger one was a little more time consuming than I expected but still easy. Basically start at one end and wrap around while hot gluing the yarn down every so often. I recommend often. It helps keep the yarn close together so the color of the actual plastic egg doesn't show through. All done! I'm not sure how expensive regular yarn is but I made two of these (one with forty-five 4 ft pieces, and one with forty-five 8 ft pieces) out of 1 1/2 rolls of that Maxi-Cord stuff which roughly totals about 150 yards. A sticker on one of the rolls I used said $6.49 but this was my grandma's so who knows when she actually bought this stuff but for those wanting a cute inexpensive Easter Wreath this one only required 6 things: ~wire or some type of wreath form ~electrical tape ~fishing line ~plastic eggs (if you want to include eggs) ~hot glue (if you want to make eggs) and... YARN! Not too shabby for someone on a budget!