I spent the day trying to find my house underneath all my junk. Clean clothes, dirty dishes, cardboard boxes saved to use for stencils, and piles of junk mail. Once I got my kitchen clean, I turned around and made a dessert to go with supper. Well, the kitchen was clean for half an hour…
I worked on wood burning the bear some more… I think I’m ready to start his cribbage peg holes.
I have learned not to woodburn while sitting on the couch, so after supper, I tried a new craft… it’s called rock wrapping. I’ve seen beautiful, decorative stones wrapped with cane or leather lacing, wire or cord… occasionally with sticks, other stones or metal, even hammered copper decorations. I jumped on YouTube and started watching.
Since I had lots of hemp cord in my crafting stash, I used it. I don’t really like the high offset wrapping on this one, but I found there’s a learning curve on figuring out spacing!
The dark grey wrap on the light grey rock is eye-catching, but with the fine hemp cord, the knots don’t stand out as much as they would have with larger lacing.
This one is called a French hitch. It was the easiest.
What do you do with them? Throw them in a bowl and look at them!
Will I make more? Possibly. I learned a few things.
- Choose more elongated rocks. Some of the ones I chose were very round and I think that was a challenge for someone who’s never wrapped rocks before! It took me some tries before I switched to the rocks you see here.
- Hemp cord is ok, but a thicker cord would show off the pattern more. I almost soaked my hemp in some beeswax to make it more sticky since I struggled at first to keep it in place. It would probably be a good idea anyway.
- Some patterns are tricky to center… realize it might take a few tries to get it right.
- Although I was looking for smooth stones, if they have a rougher surface, the cords have something to keep them in place, although if it’s too rough, it could interfere with the spacing of the cord.
- Using a lacing fid made the final step of hiding your end lacing a breeze. If you don’t have a fid, you can use a small screwdriver.
I’d urge you to try it just once… use what you have on hand… and turn a simple stone into a unique decoration!
Find me here!
Love this, a craft I will try! I love rocks and have many!
What is a lacing fid? I have never tried even macramé, so this might be too much for me. I can’t even make a decent bow! When my daughter was younger, she wrapped all of my presents for me ( except her own, of course) so everyone else got beautifully wrapped gifts and she got ones that looked like they’d been wrapped by a small child on a bad day! She seemed to like them though.
These are amazing. I have stones ‘somewhere’ just need to source or ‘find’ some string like stuff. I can be imaginative!!!!
They look great!