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I’m selling lots of old and vintage picture frames in my booth. I’ve painted them so they look rejuvenated, but I hate how the cardboard glares through the glass. I decided to make my own “filler” that not only solves the boring cardboard problem, but promotes my website as well! What You Will Need: A picture frame that you are selling A book page or other recycled paper A black permanent marker Scissors How To Do It: Cut your book page to the size of your frame....

It does the same stuff for older folks, too. Remember that tween slime craze from a few years ago? Those tweens were getting themselves SO much sensory enrichment! Fidget toys are somewhat the same, but frankly, I’d prefer them to be a bit more open-ended and process-oriented. ANYWAY, where was I? Oh, right–dyed Epsom salts! Epsom salts make a fun change of pace from the usual dyed dry rice, pasta, and beans that tend to make up most preschool sensory tables....

Did you try to apply eye shadow before having coffee and drop it on the floor? You don’t have to toss that crumbled color. Try this DIY makeup fix instead! Liz Thompson over at Feelgood Style is an organic beauty superstar. She is also a budget-savvy mom who is no stranger to DIY makeup. She recently shared a two-in-one tute for how to fix broken eye shadow. You can turn it back into a brick of powder or use her trick to make it into cream shadow....

Here are a few ideas for eco and DIY wedding dcorations for a garden or rustic theme outdoor wedding. A great way to be eco and DIY with a garden or rustic style outdoor wedding is to think outside the wedding box and look to traditional and old fashioned garden decor and even garden tools like wheelbarrows, wagons, watering cans, and buckets. These can all easily be transformed into quirky wedding decor....

You know that those disposable plastic water bottles are super convenient, but plastic waste piling up in landfills and polluting our oceans is not so convenient. What if there were a disposable water bottle that somehow didn’t create waste? Meet the edible water bottle! In the video below, Yuka Yoneda from Inhabitat shares a tutorial for making an edible water bottle using water and a couple of chemicals that we’ll get into a bit more below....

All the products are made from recycled, reclaimed or organic fabrics. On the top above “the feathers for the wings are from someone who had gathered fallen feathers from their farm” and“the feathers would have gone to the landfill had they not started selling them.” I think the idea of reclaimed and reused natural materials is brilliant and stunning, when combined with fantasy and fairytales :).. These look like costume pieces for an enchanting time… Above image courtesy of Elven Forest Creations....

Because, even though silk used to have the reputation of being a pretty fussy, dry clean-only fabric, it’s actually not. Silk is a natural material, takes dye easily, is lightweight for kids and soft for sensitive skin, and can be washed in hot water and dried in the dryer. Yes, it is still fussy to sew (although not as impossible as you may fear), but there are so many projects, both non-sewing and sewing, to try out with silk that you may be inspired to pick up that needle and thread after all, or you may find plenty to occupy you without them....

Craft yourself up a bunch of homemade hanging baskets. Then on May Day (May 1), fill the baskets with fresh-cut flowers and sneak them onto the front doorknob of your friends’ houses for them to discover. Fun, right? On May Day, not only do you get to be an anonymous do-gooder, but you get to be a CRAFTY anonymous do-gooder! When you create one of these five different May Day baskets out of recycled materials, you’re also a crafty do-gooder who’s keeping a little more trash out of the waste stream....

My favorite jeans have finally died, and before I saw Gavin’s post I was planning to start a denim quilt. Denim quilts are heavy duty for picnics and playing on at the park, and I was just at Goodwill this past weekend so I’m inspired by the availability of cheap denim that needs a second chance at life. Then I started to think about my “dead” jeans from a green point of view....

Enter Trash Matcher from Imagination Factory. On the left side of the grid are types of trash (foil, paper, beads, plastic) and the right a description of what you can make out of it. If you click the trash word, you will be redirected to a tutorial, complete with substitutions (I hadn’t thought of using leftover white house paint as gesso). With a metal coat hanger,… a cardboard tube, newspaper and a few other supplies most of us have laying around the house, you can create a model dinosaur....

Well, I guess I wasn’t the only one thinking that because Jennelle Marlborough thought the same thing and started a business called First World Trash (FWT), where she makes functional accessories out of discarded billboards. First World Trash products are handmade almost entirely from items found in the junkyard, mainly billboards and seat belts from cars, all manufactured in NYC. First World Trash bags are tear proof, water-resistant and built to last....

Wooly Baby makes adorable eco-friendly slippers for kids that are made from recycled wool sweaters and leather jackets. Josie Marsh started making these upcycled slippers when her daughter starting to walk in November of 2008 and has continued to create adorable baby shoes ever since. She said, “I’m finding that people really value an eco-friendly product, so it is worth the time and effort to find used (or otherwise eco-friendly) materials to incorporate into your craft....

Happy Wednesday, and a big thanks to everyone who entered our Green Kid Crafts giveaway. Green Kid Crafts is a monthly subscription service. When you sign up, they deliver a box of eco-friendly, kid-friendly craft projects to your door each month. We used a random number generator to choose a winner this morning, and it chose….. …Ana Marcela Herrera! Congratulations, Ana! We will get you in touch with the folks at Green Kid Crafts, so that you can get your free one-month subscription....

It was a long weekend. Halloween on Friday. More Halloween stuff on Saturday. And yes, even more Halloween stuff on Sunday. So if you’ve still got trick-or-treat candy laying around the house, costumes draped over door knobs and a sad looking pumpkin hanging out on your front porch – then you’re in the midst of what we call a “Halloween Hangover”. No worries though. There are eco-friendly remedies for all that wickedness that ails ya....

A couple seasons ago Craft Chi shared a fantastic tutorial on rolling pin prints. The site features a step-by-step how-to in photographs, so you can explore the process before you jump in, explaining it’s“a nice, easy way to print wrapping paper or even fabric. I don’t know whether these would be considered relief or collagraph prints, maybe both. You could also carve a wooden rolling pin if you desired. But this way I can remove the cork and reuse the rolling pin....

We try to keep only handmade or vintage ornaments on our Christmas tree, but thanks primarily to my children’s butter fingers we need to replenish our stash yearly, and I don’t always have the time for, and my kids aren’t always in the mood for, complicated, day-long ornament-making sessions. We were stoked, then, to sit down for half an hour with this DIY Vintage Sparkle ornament kit (given to us for free by a publicist) and bust out enough ornaments to fill all of the weird-looking gaps in our tree....

What You Will Need: A small embroidery hoop Fabric. To make this project as green as possible, try to choose an eco-friendly fabric like burlap or organic cotton. I used burlap. Vintage buttons. If you don’t have any buttons on hand, you can make your own buttons from eco-friendly materials! Ribbon. If you can, use organic ribbon. Recycled felt. If you don’t have any recycled felt on hand, you can felt an old sweater....

I’ve admired Becky’s Burlap Sunglasses Case for quite some time now, but I have no sewing skills at all. My solution? Create a no sew sunglasses case with my handy-dandy hot glue gun! What You Will Need: Two different colors of felt. If you can, use recycled felt or felt an old sweater. Scissors Hot glue/hot glue gun A pen How To Do It: Get your sunglasses and determine what size your felt needs to be....

Plastic bags from the grocery store are obviously a no-go, but I don’t even like most re-usable cloth bags, mostly because they tend to be branded, and I don’t like to do a store’s advertising for it. Want a re-usable cloth bag that’s branded with what YOU like, sized and shaped like a conventional plastic bag but stretchy, so that you can fill it even fuller? Okay, and do you want to make it WITHOUT sewing?...

I have an over abundance of mason jars, so I’m always looking for different ways to repurpose them. From canning to crafts, they have so many uses. You can use the jar as a vase, put candy in it, or place a candle inside. If you have a lid to the jar, you could even put a gift inside! For example, you can make a vegan cookie mix, other cookie kits, farm fresh apple butter, a delicious soup, your own hot sauce, or other canning recipes....