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And if the result remains junk, well… you know where the recycling bin is! For some reason, kids think that egg cartons are shockingly fun to craft with, and happily, they’re also one of the more ubiquitous items you’ll find in the recycling bin. Even if you don’t eat store-bought eggs, you definitely know someone who does. So this Halloween, empty out the recycling bin of all those lovely egg cartons, hand them over with plenty of open-ended craft supplies, and let kids craft their own decorations....

The ‘problem’ with hemp is that up until now it’s been illegal to grow here in the U.S. The standard argument seems to be that hemp plants look like pot plants, so growing it would make it easier for farmers to secretly grow marijuana. That is sort of a load of bull, but the point is becoming moot now that Colorado has legalized marijuana and is now making moves to start allowing industrial hemp farming in the state!...

What You Will Need: Cardboard box Scissors or box cutter Toilet paper rolls (I used two paper towel rolls) Green paper Pencil Hot Glue/Hot Glue gun School glue. If you can, use Eco Glue. How To Do It: Lay out your cardboard. My box was smaller so I had to take it apart to make one long piece. Draw your tree. Please don’t judge my drawing abilities– I cannot draw at all....

Making your own business cards allows you to completely customize them towards your personal career path. Graphic designers have long known how a well-designed business card features their particular skills, but custom handmade business cards could also highlight the skills of a variety of indie crafters and artists–think handmade paper, scrapbooking details, custom stamp work, or decorative stitching. These sewn business cards, which utilize two layers of scrap fabric, a recycled paper base, and your complete business information, are a little more work than your ordinary business card, but they’re beautiful, eco-friendly, quite thrifty, and they’ll certainly stand out in a crowd....

Kids. Love. Slime. This is a new discovery for me, as my kid brought home a ziplock baggie full of slime from preschool. He was so proud of it, and of course that sent me into a googling spiral, looking up how to make slime. Slime – also known as gak – is pretty cool stuff. It’s a sensory experience, science experiment, and toy, all rolled into one. It’s the kind of activity that young toddler and older kids can all enjoy....

How to sew a button or how to repair an unraveled hem are some mending basics that even someone who has never sewed can pick up easily. July 25th was Thread The Needle Day, a day to practice the nearly forgotten tradition of sewing. Within the last several decades, the “make do and mend” mentality has seemingly been tossed in the trash (along with the mending pile), but if everyone dusted off their sewing accoutrements on this day to hem those too-long jeans or stitch on a wayward button, we could sincerely make a difference in the future of our planet....

Basically, back in 1947, a woman wanted something awesome to wear to a holiday party. Being of a DIY mindset, she made herself a circle skirt out of felt (no seams!), then decorated it with cute appliques. As you can imagine, knowing how ubiquitous the term “poodle skirt” is today, her creation went over very, very, very well. What you might not have imagined before, however, is that it’s not just poodles that were on the poodle skirt....

Despair no more! You can make your own recylced yarns, and there are lots of more sustainable yarn options for sale out there, too. I’ve rounded up a few different yarns that you can make or buy. Knitting and Crochet: Yarns You can Make Newspaper Yarn – Spin yesterday’s news into a spool of usable yarn! Plarn – Transform reclaimed plastic grocery bags into yarn for your knitting or crochet projects....

Re-Construct looks fantastic! It features “11 projects friendly to the Earth and to your budget.” You can check out the trailer we watched on the Re-Construct website. Keep an eye out for Angela Nichols from Gub, one of my favorite local crafters! I just love what Jeanée has to say about the DVD: That’s exactly how I feel about working with salvaged materials. So much of the process is driven by what you can find and what those materials want to be....

As promised in last week’s Recycle a Popcorn Tin into a Trash Can post, here is what I did with the lid of the popcorn tin! I saw an idea on Pinterest where Madigan Made turned a Dollar Store burner into a magnetic memo board. This specific pinner, though, wrote in the description that you could also use a popcorn tin lid. You could see the light bulb go on above my head!...

Where on earth do you BUY those honeycomb beeswax sheets?!? Honeycomb beeswax sheets are rarely found at local, indie crafts stores (although you can request that they be stocked), rarely found at big-box crafts stores, rarely found at the honey farm booth at your neighborhood farmer’s marker. I buy my honeycomb beeswax sheets online from Knorr Beeswax, and here’s what I think of them: Quality: Although I always buy honeycomb beeswax sheets when I see them at thrift stores, nothing beats brand-new, fresh sheets....

1. Grocery Bag Cards This how-to on Craftstylish shows us how to use paper bags to create pretty cards. You can design your greetings on the computer and print them directly onto the paper bag. Next » Doily Envelopes 2. Doily Envelopes If you search around, you can find doilies in different shapes and sizes at your local thrift store or garage sales. On Martha Stewart, learn how to transform these beautiful doilies into envelopes....

As always, I couldn’t resist scouring this year’s Indie Craft Experience for new green crafters on the scene, and the folks at Reuse First really stood out to me. Jeremiah and Michelle’s mix of sweet and cheeky paper goods totally caught my eye, and they were kind enough to answer some questions about what they do and why they do it! Their insights into upcycling, waste, and consumerism are really refreshing....

My little girls’ greatest pleasure on a snowy day is to run outside without coat or mittens, fill a bowl with fresh, clean snow, and then run back inside to help make a bowl of the best snow ice cream ever. Sometimes our snow ice crean is simple, just powdered sugar stirred into snow. Sometimes it’s very elaborate, with pudding mix, vanilla, and heavy cream. The one thing that is guaranteed to never change?...

I have tried a LOT of play dough recipes. I’ve made cornstarch dough, cinnamon dough, modeling beeswax, edible play dough, and probably everything else that’s ever popped up on Pinterest. The one play dough recipe that I always keep coming back to, however, is the same recipe that I’ve been making for my kids for a full decade now: my classic play dough recipe. This recipe is made in minutes....

The first part of this equation poses many obstacles. For instance, enough cash to order all the marketing materials I need printed on recycled cardstock with soy based ink from a company across the country (because no one does that locally) and offsetting the carbon emissions it takes to ship them to me. But that’s just the beginning. I’m truly starting to understand the woes of the organizers of this year’s Democratic National Convention, even if they had $70 million to work with....

The University of Minnesota held its annual Trashion Fashion show in April, and it’s full of upcycling inspiration! The event is part of the Studio Art program and challenges students to create costumes using upcycled materials. That means instead of buying new fabric and materials, they created costumes (and some sets!) using reclaimed, recycled, and found materials. Not only do students get to show off their upcycling and costuming skills, they get course credit for doing so!...

Need a fitted sheet? Here’s how to turn a flat sheet into a fitted sheet to beef up your bedding stash. We are very hard on fitted sheets around these parts. It’s likely a combination of all the playing, sleeping, wrassling, and, yes, jumping that gets done on top of them every day, the result of which is a bunch of fitted sheets with worn spots and rips along the seams and plenty of stains from ink pens and grape juice....

My goals are to incorporate recycled materials into all our work, and to come up with some card-making ideas that are engaging and enjoyable for the children, that utilize our creativity, and that look nice whether completed by a preschooler or an adult. And I have to have a lot of ideas, because preschoolers won’t do more than a couple of copies of any one thing before they are done and DONE!...

I decided to spruce up a few of the cards giving them a handmade touch with a scrap of fabric, bias tape, stamps, and a sewing machine. It took less than 10 minutes! I will probably never buy a new card again. If I ever run out of blank notecards to transform, I can make my own with recycled card stock. Follow these steps to transform a plain thank you or notecard into something amazing and handmade....