Ribbon Lei!

My brother graduated from college two weeks ago!  I, sadly, missed it because we went on our anniversary cruise!  (Another post about that later!)

Since I knew I'd be missing his graduation, I wanted to send something that would let my brother know I loved him, but not enough to miss our cruise.  (Bwahah.)  :oP  At my college graduation, he forked out $40 (or was it $20...) for this pretty lei!

My college graduation

I knew real leis would be expensive, plus possibly hard to buy beforehand (cause of course if you buy it day of, they can super rip you off).  Also, he's a boy so maybe he wouldn't appreciate it as much.  :oP  (He'd probably appreciate a lei made out of dollar bills = $40.) 

When I was pondering this issue, Penga was posting about DIY ribbon leis, which was a PERFECT idea!  She has a couple versions but the two-colored puffy ribbon lei was my favorite.  She first posted about it here, then here.

So I set off to Michael's to buy yards of ribbons!  Though Penga suggested 50-60 yards of ribbon, it took me 100 yards and like... 10 hours.  :oP  Perhaps I am not so talented with the DIY-ing and such.  It definitely got faster as I got the hang of it.

Blue and yellow for UC!

See Penga's post for the tutorial!  Thoughts and tips I would add are:

1) Use embroidery floss/thread!  I started with regular thread and I was pretty much scared it would break the whole time.  I imagined it breaking on the day of my brother's graduation, especially  under the strain of other leis and neck ornaments.  I ended up transferring two whole spools I did on the regular thread to the embroidery floss.

2) It helped to anchor the starting bead to something to work with in the beginning.  Catch it on something... tape it down... whatever.  It helped a lot.  (I was so confused in the beginning when the bead was moving around and flopping all abouts!)

3) Penga seems to alternate each color like every two loops.  I did 8 per color and I don't think I can tell the difference.  Working with one color for 8 loops/passes kept my sanity a little better then every other.  Do whatever works for you, but in the pictures above --- 8 loops/passes per color still looks pretty intermingled (in terms of color).

I am super proud of it!  :D  And wanted to keep it.  haha.

Here's a "make-up" grad picture since my grandparents couldn't make it to his graduation at Santa Cruz.  And I thought my grandpa looked hilarious with the cap.  :D  My mom made the yellow/gold ribbon lei my grandpa is sporting (courtesy of another Penga tutorial) and you can see my handiwork on my grandma!  :)

Congrats Alvin!!  :D