Packages and Names...tied up with String!

When I saw the tutorial for twine-wrapped wire names on Pinterest, I knew that I wanted to use the idea for my embellishments for this year's brown paper packages! 

When I posted the above picture on Instagram, I had some questions about the process I used.

The tutorial featured on  Crafts Unleashed (which I followed) is really helpful...so I won't go into the full process, but just share some additional tips I found to be helpful.

Molding the wire into the names takes just a couple minutes. Wrapping the twine takes a while. I think it took me almost an entire two hour movie to finish Hadleigh's name from start to finish. 

Initials obviously are much quicker projects but still cute!

Cut more wire than you think you will need. I used about 20 inches for names with 4 or 5 letters. I used a little more than double that with Nathanael & Madeleine...and still came up a bit short with Madeleine. Looping letters like "e" and "l" don't take much wire, but letters like "a" "d" "m" and "n" have extra folds to make the letters form correctly and therefore require more wire per letter.

The above picture shows what the names or initials look like before stringing.

Leaving the letters with wider gaps helped me to wrap the twine more easily. If you compare the above picture to the one below, you can see how I tightened the wire after wrapping with the twine.

You can tighten the wire before wrapping, but it is more difficult to make the twine wrap smoothly in the creases.

On letters that overlap each other, like "L," "H," "G," and "K" I would recommend securing the point where the wire overlaps together with one wrap of twine AFTER you've wrapped all of the letter (up to to the overlap point). This way the letter does not stretch apart easily.

With the "T" above, I wrapped the twine up the left side of the "T", and halfway down the right side. Then I wrapped a small piece of wire to cross the "T," following the original tutorial's directions for wrapping it with twine. Once the cross-piece was covered in twine, I continued to wrap the bottom half of the "T."

And my last tip...double names. :) I used a really long piece of wire and started from the beginning. When I reached the "h" in Sarah, I spelled right to left with the wire for the second name, and I actually found this to be much easier than working from left to right.  I left a little extra between names so that I could center "Kate" underneath "Sarah," knowing that I could always make the loop after the "h" a little bigger or smaller.

I think these would make adorable ornaments or cute decorative pieces to hang in a child's room!

If you have any questions, please ask in the comments, and I will add my responses there!