My first Martha project

May I have a trumpet sound please? (doo-doo-doo!) I am proud to announce and reveal my very first Martha craft, from the November issue of Living (Martha doesn’t have it up on her site yet, but once she does I’ll put a link in here). I am quite shocked at how well (almost) it turned out. Of course, it looks nothing like the one in the magazine, but I would say it’s not half bad.

First please allow me to vent about Martha’s craft projects. While it’s nice that she has a guide in the magazine that tells you where to order all the supplies, there’s no way I’m about to do that. First of all, the prices are ridiculous. Secondly, by the time I order it all and it arrives, it will be next month. Not practical. So off I went to Micheal’s. They only had one kind of wreath form and it’s much wider than the one Martha uses in her directions. I also chose one with a smaller diameter. They also did not have any “metallic papers” so I bought gold wrapping paper and used that.

I honestly thought there was no way this was going to work. The instructions are very vague and not very detailed. Martha left it up to me to design the leaf shape. Eeek. Deep breathing.

I did not understand how to staple paper onto a metal wreath, but shockingly, it actually worked. I guess I stapled paper to paper which held it on. My leaf sizes are not uniform and the gold ones stand out a bit, but really, for a first effort, I’m pretty pleased with myself.

Ok, so my bow is totally dorky. I know. And she didn’t say how to attach it, so I stapled that sucker on too.

Would I proudly display this on my front door for the entire month of November. Um, no. Not a chance. But it’s not as hideously embarrassing as I expected.

Now for the real question – did crafting relax me? I guess maybe a little, when I wasn’t shouting at it “Come on, Martha!” I do think that I can see the pleasure is making things yourself. The whole project took about 50 minutes from start to finish and I did it while my son was doing his homework.

Have you attempted this project? Let me know how it went.