Thrifty Fun with String

I've seen a lot of cards and scrapbook pages that use baker's twine lately, so I figured I'd pick some up and try it on my projects.   I found some at Archiver's.  I was SHOCKED at the price!  It was $4 for a package of 3 colors, less than 9 yards of each color.  Seriously?  It's STRING for cryin' out loud!!

So, I set about to find some for a more reasonable cost.  I had some Sugar n Cream kitchen cotton, but it was a little too thick.  So, I separated the strands, and voila! 

 Here is my version next to the "fancy floss" from Archiver's:



Because there are 4 plies in the strand, you can create multiple color combinations.  For example, the reddish cotton has a ply of red, white, beige and yellow; so you could use red/white, red/beige, red/yellow, beige/white, beige/yellow or use two red, yellow or white  create your own combination.  Same for the blue/white/green cotton skein.  I used two plies for each of the samples that I made.

Oh - the best part?  The kitchen cotton is on sale at Michael's this week for $1 a ball.  Each ball has 95 yards, so the cost is about 1/2 a cent per 2 ply yard of "baker's twine."  The Archiver's twine cost 15 cents per yard.  I know you won't need almost 200 yards of baker's twine, so you can either share with friends or learn to crochet!!