$5 Craft

I went on a search today for some raffia... They usually carry it at the dollar stores. I use raffia a lot at home. Everything from gifted preserves, birthday presents and even woodwork pieces and things get decorated with the stuff! I like to incorporate natural seed pods, spices, twigs or wildflowers into my gift wrap and raffia is the perfect binder that goes with them all! For about a dollar a bag, you can't lose!

I used the last of mine up last night after I came across a book at the library on making raffia bags and hats... both of which are useful to me! Especially something I could design myself to take into the bush for wild crafting and wild edibles! I was excited to try to make something cool... The dollar store was out of it , so I had to venture into the Sprawlmart. For some reason seeing someone buying 10 bags of " hay" ( so they called it) made people stare and snicker. Then I went to the local crappy supermarket... the one that sells very few veggies and mostly junk food. I thought that I would have the most luck of finding a rainbow array of kool aid to try to dye some raffia with. ( I kind of go all silly in the head when I find a new medium to work with and have a billion different things I want to make with it right away) I thought that I could make a cool basket for the playroom to keep math manipulative's in or something. I didn't know if the kool aid would work but of course had read that people use it for play silks and wool and such. I have NEVER bought kool aid in my life. There I was in the line up with my handful of every type of the stuff available... and this super crunchy couple comes up in the line behind me... and rudely guffaw to each other and roll their eyes! lol I guess they assumed that I was going to go home and have some sort of koolaid binge or something!

When I got home I boiled up each little bundle with a package of the dye. It smelled like candy and hay. Still better than henna though! ( my poor family and my constant experiments... I rendered pork fat for the past day so we had to deal with an awful porky odor all day previously) I let each one sit for ten min or so in the hot water and then rinsed and lay it out on newspaper. It turned out great!!! The " ice blue" colour left a little to be desired, but in all I am really happy with the results!