Ok, so I tried to keep the “homemade gifts” thing going from last year, but this year was SO busy and I wanted to shoot myself in the face, and I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to.

That being said, I managed to make some ugly fun little gifts for some friends by using this handy DIY from Design*Sponge.  Now, it seems like a cute idea, and I tried my best, but after it was all said and done, I kind of felt like I was 7 years old and giving my friends a picture of my hand cut out on a paper plate with sparkly macaroni on it. 

Anyhoo, the best one I made was with this really thick 1″ twisted manila rope…

First, you use a bunch of glue and glue it…

Then, you utilize even more glue and just keep gluing…

And then, you glue…

And then you have a bowl. 

Now, I felt that one single glue-and-rope bowl was clearly not enough to warrant a full present, so I went with a smaller “nested” bowl on the inside.

Note: the size of the rope needs to correspond to the size of the bowl.  Because if you use thin rope to make a big bowl, it will look like a pile of smashed shit.  Trust me.

Anyhoo, here is the smaller bowl being glued…

And here they are, all nested together.

I made a whole bunch of these, to varying degrees of success, but this set was by far the nicest, mostly due to the thick 1″ twisted manila rope.  I bought 15 feet of it, thinking that I would be able to make three or four rope-and-glue bowls with it.  FYI – 15 feet of 1″ twisted manila rope makes ONE rope-and-glue bowl. 

In order to be “cool and different” in my rope-and-glue bowl craft adventures, I also tried to deviate from the Design*Sponge recommendation of twisted paper rope and make a couple of bowls using nylon diamond-braided rope.

I thought that the black and red and yellow diamond pattern would turn out all cool and look like a big ol’ coiled snake or something like that.

But then, after it was made, someone told me “that is one fucking ugly bowl”, and I became embarrassed. And I decided to not give my snake-rope-and-glue bowl to anyone.

If you want my snake-rope-and-glue bowl, let me know. 

Anyways, I apologize to everyone who received my rope-and-glue bowls for a present and had to pretend they liked it, much like when you get a paper cut out of a 7 year-old’s hand pasted onto a paper plate with sparkly macaroni on it and you have to pretend you like it and put the horrible disaster on your fridge for two weeks to make the child feel better.