Aren’t these handmade necklaces encapsulating natural ephemera beautiful? In 2014 it’s easy to go to any store and buy a product that is mass produced and uniform in style. With no character to differentiate one from the next, it’s simple to find things that are perfect to the point of boring. That is why I am so enchanted with handmade artwork. When we buy handmade, we get a glimpse of someone else’s story....
Yes, we DID finally carve our pumpkins! To be honest, I was quietly hoping to get away without carving pumpkins at all this year, especially after Halloween came and went without the kiddos making a peep about Jack-o-lanterns. However, last week my older daughter, passing by the gorgeous whole pumpkins decorating our front porch, suddenly seemed to notice them for the first time since early October. She did an actual double-take, then shouted, “Hey!...
I love spray paint. It’s so easy, so efficient, so quick to use. I also hate spray paint. Even water-based, “eco-friendly” spray paints are only a better choice than other spray paints; they aren’t nearly as environmentally friendly as non-aerosol paint. Okay, bear with me for a sec, as I can’t let that last phrase pass without a short-ish chemistry lesson. Technically, the paint that I’m about to tell you about is also aerosol paint, as “aerosol,” chemically speaking, simply means particles suspended in air....
What You Will Need: Book pages or other recycled paper Scissors A permanent marker Crayons School glue. If you can, use eco-glue. Hot glue/hot glue gun A brooch pin. You can find these at your local craft store. How To Do It: Draw and cut out a large circle on your book pages. Then, draw and cut out a circle that is slightly smaller like so: Draw and cut out the “ribbons....
Want to throw a party for a kid and NOT serve a bunch of crap to eat? That was my challenge for my kiddo’s recent dinosaur-themed seventh birthday party. No potato chip “dinosaur scales,” no jelly bean “dinosaur eggs,” no dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets or snack crackers or grocery store cookies. It may take a little imagination to see the dinosaur in these healthy fruit and cheese dinosaurs, but kids have a ton of imagination....
The bonus to papier mache Easter eggs over plastic eggs, however, is that they’re made from recycled materials, not petroleum by-products. They’re handmade, kid-painted, and can be used for years. What’s not to love? Read on for the tutorial: To make these papier mache Easter eggs, you will need: newspaper: Tear it into narrow strips. glue: Use Mod Podge, watered down school glue, or the homemade natural flour/water paste that I use in our DIY pinatas....
Cupcake flags don’t have to be store-bought and disposable. Using the food flag templates from Cut up This Book! Special Occasions, you can craft little party flags from vintage or stash papers, or, as I did here, from the very tiniest pieces of scrap fabric. Not only does this lead to less waste and a more eco-friendly event, but if you craft any of your other party decorations–buntings, cloth napkins, table covers, etc....
Would you like to sew a quilt using only your fabric scraps that are so small that any normal crafter would toss them in the trash? You bet you would! Postage stamp quilts have no rhyme or reason other than that they’re made of teeny, tiny (1.5″ tiny!) squares of fabric. You can trade postage stamp quilt squares with other crafters, or sew entirely from your own scraps. I’ve been working on my postage stamp quilt for years, now, and I don’t expect to finish it until I’m old....
Usually, if you want to craft with or display a vintage photograph, I’d suggest that you photocopy the photo, and use only the copy. However, our stuff is in our lives to be loved by us, or what’s the point of dragging it around behind us when we move? If you truly want to display your actual vintage photographs, then I say go ahead! Just… do a couple of things differently, okay?...
It’s a bit of a random craft, sure–perhaps a little church camp, perhaps a little preschool. But your church camp and your preschool I’m sure didn’t have the same standards of artistic quality that I do. When I say that I’m going to show you how to dye pasta, I sure don’t mean that you can dye it some pale color that’s all uneven, anyway, and looks like something a three-year-old should be stringing on elastic cord....
Have you ever been hiking and come across a really cool animal track? Maybe you don’t know what animal made it, or maybe you do know, but the track is just so perfect that you wish you could bundle it up and take it home to admire? Maybe you’ve got a kid who loves animals and nature, who could use a little hands-on science enrichment? You need to know how to field cast....
A great theme party starts with a great themed invitation! We always do fun, themed invitations for my kiddos’ birthday parties–check out the message in a bottle invitation to the pirate-themed birthday party and the giant Minecraft block invitation to the Minecraft-themed party. This year, my soon-to-be eleven-year-old is having a fairy tale-themed birthday party, so we made each invitee a party invitation in the shape of a royal scroll....
No matter what project you’re working on, we can show you how to make glue to suit your needs. Try one of these five recipes! I’m a glue stick addict. It’s terrible, I know. I can’t imagine a single art supply that uses up more worthless plastic packaging and takes up more landfill space, unless perhaps it’s markers, which are also pretty terrible, but at least markers last longer. My two daughters can use up an entire glue stick during the course of one exuberant art project....
Ask me how I know this omg. But fortunately, concrete pavers are just as useful as they are ubiquitous. There are lots of places where concrete pavers can come in handy other than, you know, paving things. Such as in the garden! Unlike my painted rocks project, these pavers are a little big to serve as plant markers. However, these concrete pavers are the perfect size to mark out space in your garden, whether it’s to save a spot for a future planting or tell you where it’s okay to step....
If you thought that DIY coloring book page postcards were easy, then you’re in for an even bigger treat, because postcards made from food packaging? Kind of the easiest thing EVER. Seriously, you don’t even need a tutorial for this business. All you have to do is grab yourself some cardboard food packaging, the dorkier the better (check out my Funfetti, Friends! I can’t tell my daughter no!): How to Make Postcards from Food Packaging Cut the postcard to any of the dimensions allowable in the USPS postcard regulations....
It’s easy to buy cute embellished clothing, and it saves you a lot of work–every bedazzled rainbow sequin on this kid’s shirt is one rainbow sequin that I didn’t have to bedazzle myself. But if you like your clothes to stay nice throughout their lifetime, then you’re likely to be disappointed by that embellished shirt that you bought, because sequins and spangles don’t have a lifetime warranty–they start to fall off, leaving gaps in that cute embellished design....
As I mentioned last week, my roommate – Crystal – is a musician. Specifically, though, her main instrument is drums. We decided to showcase our love for music right in our living room by upcycling old drums into side tables! What You Will Need: Drums. We used a floor tom (the bottom drum in the picture above) and a high tom (the drum on top). The floor tom is actually from a garage sale and the high tom is from Crystal’s old drum set....
It’s October. You need a sugar skull candle holder. There are skull-shaped vodka bottles for sale in liquor stores. Let’s play! Supplies To make your own sugar skull candle holder, you will need: Skull-shaped glass bottle. I’m using empty Crystal Head vodka bottles (hiccup!), but there are other skull-shaped glass bottles around. Rust-Oleum Paint+Primer spray paint, heirloom white. I don’t love spray paint, obviously, because it’s not eco-friendly, BUT this exact color in this exact brand is the perfect bone color....
So, the kidlets are home from school today, bugging you for something to do, and you are hiding on the computer, catching up on blogs? Why not turn the computer off (after reading this, of course) and work on a junk mail craft together? Paper bead making is a great craft for your little fashionista and is pretty simple to do. Using only junk mail, a toothpick and glue, this project is an easy way to get in a casual lesson on green living....
Kids like toys. This is known. Kids also like new toys, and they like them just the same whether they’re handmade or store-bought, so you might as well save the money and make them handmade, especially if you can make them from the junk that would otherwise end up in your trash can or recycling bin. That’s the starting point behind many of the projects in Made by Dad, a book of crafts for adults to make for and with children (and which I received for free from a publicist)....
