Barking mad; how to make a dog from pipe cleaners

You are not a fully functioning adult woman – or man – if you haven’t got at least one craft to your name. In an effort to keep up with the ‘Annas’ (don’t know why but always imagine crafters as Annas), I am going to attempt to make a dog from house-hold products. Using nothing but an extremely useful YouTube video imaginatively called ‘How to make a pipe cleaner dog’ I am going to make a pipe cleaner dog. 

Always be wary of ‘experts’ who claim their skills can be taught in a few easy stages. It’s not generosity. They want you to dig down to your own sewage pipes in an attempt to flush them with a bit of Mr Muscle because if there’s one thing better than a blocked drain; it’s a blocked drain exacerbated by cack-handed repairs of an incompetent DIY-er.

The same can be said for experts on YouTube crafters who peddle the ‘it’s easy to make a pipe cleaner dog’ mythology.

Myth #1 is that you will have everything you need ‘lying about the home’. Well, in the case of a crafter this is probably true. I am more likely to have David Beckham stripped and lying about on my bed than a Spellbinders Grand Calibur Die-Cutting Machine. It’s also true about pipe cleaners. Since my spell as a Sherlock Holmes body double didn’t pan out – I have no real use for them. But apparently, they are also likely to be ‘lying around my house’ together with tiny black beads and a sturdy pair of sharp scissors.  I couldn’t find any of them…

For reasons that are too ‘1950s housewife’ to explain; my hubby powers the household EBay account. I would rather eat a home-made poncho than own up to the ‘pipe cleaner dog thing’ and so, to explain away all my purchases, I told him I have taken up a new hobby; namely smoking a Meerschaum pipe decorated with Toho Bugle seed beads.

Myth #2 (remember when hashtags meant something?) is that you can fashion your crafts with the minimum of cost/effort and risk to your soft furnishings. They say pictures speak a thousands words so I am going to share a few images of my kitchen during the craft making process. One of them features my craft cupboard; a black hole of despair from which metres of entangled wires, ribbons and string (most of which I didn’t even buy) fall out every time I open the door. Brace yourselves…

Myth #3 – it will cost so much less than the shop bought item and be so much more rewarding to pull off.

People who say this have clearly never heard of sweat shops in China. The current EBay cost of a terrier soft toy is £4.99. I have spent on one Ebay click as there’s no way you can buy a solitary pipe cleaner so I had to buy 200. In fact, if you are in the market for a solitary pipe cleaner I have 197 going spare.

There are ‘apps’ that can tell you how much you charge for a craft project taking into account time, materials, marketing, hours spent at A&E etc. Taking all that into account; my pipe cleaner dog should retail at £250. Not that I would ever sell him…….

According to my new YouTube friend Froggy, a pipe cleaner dog – in common with something else I’d like to do with David Beckham – is just a matter of a couple of twists, a few slides and a lot of pushes. In fact, she uses the word ‘just’ a lot. It’s clearly compelling stuff as the little video she has made has been viewed almost 700,000 times; 600,00 of those were me; funnily enough I was okay with the ‘two twists to make a head’ thing but my Bugle beads were simply not big enough to slide onto the pipe cleaner to make my little dog’s face.

Yes, my dear WI friends, I needed ‘bigger beads’.

By this stage – about an hour in – I was experiencing craft rage – the incandescent anger you get when you think you have all the moving parts you need for a craft project but you’ve miscalculated and need to go to Hobbycraft but it’s 9pm and it’s closed.

So with no little eyes or nose on my dog, it wasn’t looking very dog-like. I needed radical action. Glue. After the Christmas fairy debacle I promised hubby I would never again reach for the glue because I damaged so many electronic gadgets. As it was, I was so pleased with my doggy frame, I decided to ignore his pleas. There was only one way my pipe cleaner monstrosity was going to turn into full-on Fox Terrier. Pass the Gorilla glue.

Which bring me to Myth #4 – glue will stay on your project not on your hands. They say medieval archers used to hold up two fingers to the enemy after every battle to prove they still had their bow hand intact. It should also be obligatory for every YouTube crafter to hold up their hands after every project to show how may fingers you will have stuck together on completion of your card/toy/bungalow. In my case it was an unimpressive two. This wouldn’t be so bad if the glue had stuck the beads/wool onto my dog. It doesn’t matter how many macho animal descriptions manufacturers ‘stick’ on their products – Gorilla, Rhino, Chihuahua – I have yet to find one that sticks anything to anything unless you count finger to finger.

When I embarked on my craft project my very talented friend Helen ‘Allthingsstampy‘ Read said she would hang up her ‘craft apron’ if I pulled off anything like the little dog above. At this stage of the game; it wasn’t looking good. One eye had dropped off and the Fox Terrier beard looked more like furry gag. Most self-respecting people would have simply picked up their pipe cleaners and gone home but 1. I have no self-respect 2. I was home.

I soldiered on.

The beauty about pipe cleaners and wool is that you can keep moulding and ruffling. I also decided to clamp the bits of dog which kept falling off (the worst culprit being the ribbon-collar) and so – after a bit of grunting, sweating and swearing (heaven knows what David-next-door made of it) – I was finally in the position of having a homemade little fella as a welcome addition to my home.

Conclusion; Well, I can only go by the reaction of my friends and family. Hubby came home and said ‘What have you been buying from EBay now?’ which I took to be a huge compliment. Son muttered that it was ‘Nothing like Eddie” (I had made the rash claim that he would be the spitting image of my horror hound). He now claims he can ‘do better’.

Well, in the words of Helen ‘Allthingsstampy’ Read, I will hang up my own craft apron if he can. As for Helen, she admitted that it ‘wasn’t bad’ for a first attempt but her apron is safe as my little dog looks like he’s been in a fight with my big dog. But do you know what…like all crafters I suffer from crazy delusions; I think he’s fabulous and I don’t care what anyone else says.

 

For more pipe cleaner ‘porn’ visit Pinterest. 

To make your own; visit Froggy  and tell her I sent you.