Pipe cleaner Shamrocks

Pipe cleaners were one of my daughter's favorite mediums when she was little. She still likes getting a pack every so often to make sculptures. Add that to the fact I'm a craft stasher, and I found a box of 100 green pipe cleaners while I was organizing the other day. Green, and it's nearly Saint Patrick's Day, so I thought "Shamrocks!" These can be hot glued to pin backs or hair clips. 

So I told Dea if she wanted to make some shamrocks, I'd post instructions. I made one as well. Mine wound up being a lot more complicated than her's. She made 3 and instructions for the other 2 are coming after she shows me how she made them.

First the basics- How to make a spiral.

Start by curving the end of the pipe cleaner around a pencil or pen.

Then you'll hold that circle flat between you'r thumb and index finger.

Hold the end of the wire with your other hand and turn the circle to spiral the wire around that center. Adjust your hold as necessary until you have a spiral the size that you want it. You can spiral as tight or as loosely as you'd like.

So now you know the basics of making a spiral. Let's start with Dea's shamrock.

Take 2 pipe cleaners, and twist them together in the middle. Spread the ends so they form an X shape at right angles from each other.

Now spiral 3 of the ends in the same direction. It looks a lot like a triskele.

Trim the bottom wire or use it to twist around something to create an accessory or gift. 

Mine takes 4 pipe cleaners. Bend 3 of them in half and open them out to about a 90 degree angle. Spiral the ends towards each other to create open heart shapes.

With the 4th pipe cleaner, starting about halfway down the sides of the hearts, wrap it around the sides of 2 of the hearts to join them together. Then form a loop for the stem.

Now wrap it around the sides of the heart on the opposite side and the middle heart.

You can trim the wire at this point, but what I did instead was bring the wire back down the stem, and wrap the stem.

Use hot glue or E-6000 to attach the shamrock to something. No pinches!

Pipe Cleaner Master

Locally, we have an artist named Kenneth S. William who is the Pipe Cleaner Master. So his site says, and so I have to agree. We first saw him in a news story, and we were stunned by the sheer number of things surrounding him that he made, and how fast his fingers were twisting colored pipe cleaners into bright pretty sculpture.
Today we had the pleasure of seeing him work in person, unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera to really get good pictures, but as we looked at his amazing creations and talked to him about them, he was twisting a Garfield.
And wow.. the creations. There was Martin Luther King Jr., Wakko, Yakko and Dot, there were Marvel and DC (but unfortunately no Nightwing, what's up with THAT?), flowers, football helmuts, all amazingly detailed in pipe cleaners. They piled high, fuzzy wonderful creations.
Mike and I knew were going to buy at least, and Mike had his eye on Spiderman and Venom, both of which had removable masks, so you could see Eddie Brock and Peter Parker under the masks, but we were on a budget, so we could only afford one. Mike wanted to get one for me, and wow.. umm.. between Gonzo and Wonder Woman? I finally decided on Wonder Woman.

Isn't that detail great? The stars, the red red lips and blue eyes and red button earrings. All his work shows that attention to detail.
You can contact him and see more of his work here.
That's my daughter posing with Wonder Woman.