Don’t let New Year’s get the shaft, just because it’s at the tag-end of the holiday season. Celebrate the holiday with all of the hoopla that it deserves with these eco-friendly New Year’s crafts. 1. black-eyed peas. Where I come from (which is, yes, the South), it is a requirement that you eat black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day. How else will you have good luck in the year to come?...
Instead, check out these DIY version for patch displays. With this many ideas, there’s sure to be something here to inspire you! 1. Backpack If the patches are ones that you’d be proud to display while out and about, why not make a special backpack especially for them? This DIY backpack is made to display a kid’s Junior Ranger badges and patches while the kid explores–and earns another badge! Of course, you don’t have to sew a special backpack; you can sew patches onto any backpack that you already own....
You HAVE to have plenty of bookmarks. Find yourself without a bookmark, and you might dog-ear your book. That is NOT okay. See? Got to have a lot of bookmarks! Fortunately, bookmarks, even though they’re small, have quite a bit of scope for the imagination, as Anne-with-an-e would say. They’re some of the most satisfying projects to craft, since they come together so quickly, and they support a wide variety of media, so whether you’re a painter, a scrapbooker, a jewelry maker, or a crafter who defies category, there’s a bookmark for you....
Don’t buy new — reduce, reuse, redecorate! Today we’re sharing 30 repurposed DIY side table ideas to inspire you! From the living room to the bedroom, side tables (or night stands) are super important! They hold all of our “stuff” like drinks, cell phones, alarm clocks, picture frames, and adorable DIY decor. Despite their ordinary purpose, side tables don’t have to be boring! Switch things up in your home by repurposing, recycling, and upcycling items into unique DIY side tables!...
I love having art on my walls. Buying new frames and having stuff professionally matted would make that pleasure super pricey, so I’m especially stoked that I haven’t purchased a brand-new picture frame in over a decade. Instead, I refinish picture frames that I’ve bought from thrift stores and yard sales. Everything matches, I can mat my art creatively, and I save big bucks (and divert trash from the waste stream) while still having loads of pretty things hung up to look at....
Looking for DIY garden projects to make your green space awesome? We have you covered! Throughout Garden Week we’ve shared incredible DIY garden projects here at CAGW and on all of the sites that participated! We were blown away by the creativity and ingenuity of each project posted, and we hope that you were too! To end Garden Week with a bang, we’ve put together 75 of the best DIY garden projects in a mega round-up....
Obama’s arts initiative (click here to read it) includes emphasis on arts education, and even addresses the issue of health care for artists, which I know is so important to those of you trying to find a way to make what you love for a living. McCain has track record of voting to cut funding for the arts, even in prosperous times, and there is nothing about arts policy on his website....
Too soon to think about summer camp, you say? I totally agree, except that it’s not. You’re already going to be packing and lecturing and buying new stuff the entire month before summer sleep-away camp starts, and any cute ideas that you have for camp crafts for your kid to bring are going to go right out the window if you haven’t already made them. So you might as well make them now!...
Red and pink coral beads are popular in handmade jewelry as well as in couture jewelry lines. Coral beads are beautiful, but unsustainable harvesting methods mean they’re also not so great for the planet. Coral reefs are actually living things. They grow incredibly slowly – less than one millimeter per year. Some of these reefs that we’re exploiting for fashion purposes live to be up to a hundred years old! The reefs provide critical habitats for marine life....
A moveable alphabet is a magical thing for a small child. Moveable alphabets let kids play with words–they don’t just read (although they will!), but they also create, and compose, and develop a sensory understanding of the ability of letters to be manipulated. Not all kids have a moveable alphabet of their own to play with, but they should. Kids with parents who have the time and energy or money and energy to provide them with pre-reading supplies to enrich their learning shouldn’t be the only kids who have pre-reading supplies to enrich their learning....
Next time you’ve got an empty bottle, try getting your craft on instead with some of these craft projects for glass bottles! You know the feeling when you finish a delicious beer or drink that last glass from a bottle of wine? Not the tipsy feeling, but the one when you take your empty bottle and head to the recycle bin. It’s sort of a bummer, right? Beer and wine bottles are often so well-designed, and it’s a shame to waste them....
As an indie crafter, I’m always bummed that the majority of awesome indie fairs–Maker Faire, most of the Bazaar Bizzare locations, three-fourths of the Renegades–choose to operate on the peripheries of the continental U.S. (it’d probably suck even more if I lived in Hawaii, but I’m willing to bet there are compensations to make up for the inconvenience of living in Hawaii). So I’m always extra stoked when there are good, national-level indie craft fairs that operate right here in the heartland (occasionally known as the “armpit of America”)....
In Candy Construction: How to Build Edible Race Cars, Castles, and Other Cool Stuff out of Store-Bought Candy, author Sharon Bowers takes candy crafting to a whole new level, offering step-by-step tutorials for edible projects that are suitable for an entire year’s worth of theme parties and kid-craft projects. Sounds delicious, right? Well, here’s what I really think about it: Next »
You know we love a good glass bottle craft around these parts! We’ve featured a few awesome crafters who reuse glass bottles in their work. Of course, you won’t be surprised that we loved Re-Nests’ round up of great glass bottle craft ideas! Not only did the Re-Nest round up have some unusual uses we’d never seen before, make sure you scroll to the end for a simple glass cutting tutorial!...
But recently, my daughter received a box of nail polish as a gift. Supposedly, they are free of the four notorious toxins: Toluene, Formaldehyde, Pthalate, and Camphor. But they smelled nasty. So I read the label and guess what? They still contained a ton of other nasty chemicals. But I felt bad throwing them out so I kept them, hoping I could use them for something. Here are a couple of ways I decided to use them for crafting…and more....
But I wondered how do you cut these thick beautiful wine bottles? I researched and found these nifty ways to cut wine bottles and make beautiful home decorations out of them. There are as many ways to cut glass as there are home decor ideas. Hope you’ll try at least one of these methods. But please read the following caution warning before you begin. CAUTION – with any of the techniques mentioned here, you MUST wear safety goggles and gloves....
Want to invite pollinators to your garden? Try this awesome DIY beehive made with mason jars! Did you guys know that it’s National Pollinator Week? We really need to think about pollinators like bees and butterflies every week, but this week folks are paying extra special attention to these important insects. Keeping bees is one way that you can help support our food system by helping these fragile creatures thrive. Vegan Crafter Note: If you’re vegan, keeping bees might seem like it goes against your ethics, but it doesn’t have to!...
What You Will Need: A CD case Paper. You can use eco-friendly scrapbook paper, newspaper, book pages, sheet music, magazine pages, etc. A black marker or permanent marker Tape Glue. If you can, use EcoGlue. Your business cards How To Do It: Cut your paper to the size of the front of your CD case. Embellish it! I glued a coordinating paper on top of my patterned paper and then wrote “take one” on it....
Green cleaning is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to DIY home projects that save money and make your home healthier for your and your family. The list below has lots of green cleaning recipes, sure, but there are also a ton of cool DIY home projects to make your house more energy efficient to lower your bills. The best part about improving energy efficiency is that you don’t just reduce your power and gas bill....
Neon is super hot right now, but if you’re working with reclaimed fabrics it can be hard to track down that vibrant goodness. Fabric paint to the rescue! When you’re choosing fabric paint for your neon hair clip, look for something that’s water-based and non-toxic. My friend Rachel Faucett sent me a pack of her new Handmade Charlotte stencils to try out, and I’ve been stenciling up a storm ever since!...
