When I’m chilling alone and also have a craft fair coming up, I often like to whip out one of my most favorite but also rarely used (it’s fairly child-unfriendly) toys: the Dremel. Now, this isn’t a commercial, so if you have any kind of hand-held rotary tool, whether or not it’s the same brand as mine, you’ll be able to follow along with the latest craft creation I’m making for my fair this weekend: vinyl record album pendants....
What You Will Need: An empty shampoo bottle or really any small plastic bottle Scissors A black permanent marker A ruler A pencil Items to embellish your “mailbox.” I used scrapbook paper and a hot glue gun. If you decide to use scrapbook paper, try to use an eco-friendly scrapbook paper like the Green Stack Collection. How To Do It: Clean your bottle. With your ruler, mark how high you would like to have your “pocket....
Luckily, one brand that is commonly found in said box stores is Lion Brand and even more luckier is that Lion Brand now has an organic cotton yarn. Hallelujah! Lion Brand Organic Cotton is free from herbicides, pesticides and other agro-chemicals. It comes in four natural colors as no dyes are used to make the colors. Check out the light gray-green of Cypress or go darker with my favorite, Bark....
I recently needed to make such a journey and found myself staring down the yarn isle at A.C. Moore. In amongst all the horrid, scratchy, acrylic yarns, I found a new addition to what big box stores have to offer in ways of eco-friendly yarn. Redheart yarn has joined the ranks and now have an Eco-Cotton yarn. This yarn is about 75% recycled cotton and 25% acrylic. It isn’t the most environmentally friendly yarn, but it is encouraging to see reuse in a big brand name like Redhart....
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The trickiest part to green up in many of these tutorials is when it calls for batting or interfacing. If you have scraps around that are the right size, use those, but otherwise sturdy denim will work in place of heavy interfacing, and you can use organic cotton batting to add some cushion, where they call for it.
Thanks to Pinterest, I’ve been searching thrift stores high and low to find a ladder to upcycle into a shelf. Finally, I found an old bunk bed ladder to transform! I simply propped it up against the wall and added decorations. In the future I might paint it and give it a shabby chic look like the Shabby Chic Coffee Table, but for now, I’m loving the rustic wood....
https://www.instagram.com/p/BmiXUHijLv1/?tagged=christmastablerunner So skip the store-bought polyester fabric table runners, and instead dig through your fabric stash, dust off your sewing machine, and check out the following list for your new favorite Christmas table runner: Repurposed Table Runner The table runner in this tutorial is made from an old bed sheet, but any whole cloth fabric would look nice if you don’t see any appropriate sheets in the thrift stores....
Have you ever seen a janky old dresser standing at the side of the road, mysteriously missing all of its drawers? That’s because there are so many great things that you can make with old drawers! While I don’t advise thrifting an entire dresser just for the drawers, there are plenty of circumstances in which removing the drawers from a damaged, poor quality, or discarded dresser is an act of rescue....
If you really needed toilet paper, paper towels, bleach wipes, or other single-use cleaning items, good luck trying to find them! I’ve only hit the grocery store a couple of times since my state’s shelter-in-place order began, and I have yet to see them on the shelves–there’s also no flour or sugar, because I guess everyone else in my state is doing a lot of baking while quarantined, and they must be using their extra time to cook beans from scratch, too, because all of the dried beans are also gone....
And if you’re feeling especially adventurous, sew something heirloom-quality for Halloween. A quilt or a beautifully-embellished soft decoration might be an unusual piece to create with a Halloween theme. It’s worth it, thought, to see your unique personality shine through something that can’t be store-bought. Check out my list, below, of my favorite things to sew for Halloween. And don’t forget to tweak all of these patterns and tutorials to suit yourself....
If I was still slogging my way through grad school, I’d probably be burning right now with the desire to write a paper theorizing that the Caboodle, and an entire generation of eighties kids’ longing for it, represents the birth of our obsession with plastic storage, particularly the kind that has lots of little compartments and dividers. I’m still not immune to it, considering that my kids’ Perler bead stash (also plastic, ugh) currently resides in a giant Caboodle-like carrier with lots of little plastic dividers, and their polymer clay stash (yet more plastic, grr) resides in something similar....
My favorite type of kanzashi is tsumami kanzashi, which includes flower-shaped ornaments made by folding and pinching tiny squares of cloth. The look of kanzashi has inspired a whole sub-genre of crafting, with plenty of tutorials especially for making kanzashi-style flowers and other ornaments, usually substituting ribbon for other types of cloth. Although there’s definitely a learning curve involved in making teeny-tiny folds that result in elaborate flowers, the materials, at least, are quite accessible: if you’ve got some ribbon scraps in your stash (bonus points if they’re silk), then you, too, can try out kanzashi-style ornaments!...
Got an old light fixture that needs a revamp and your energy efficient bulbs? Check out our slideshow of DIY lighting ideas to update your decor without buying new! Update a Vintage Chandelier A chandelier looks so classy in your house or apartment’s foyer, but old hanging fixtures can look a little bit dated. Check out how Bonnie quickly updated a vintage chandelier with a just a few inexpensive supplies!...
If you’re committed to reducing your footprint as a consumer, however, then even purchasing just the stamp carving blocks that will enable you to make all your own custom stamps can be just too much purchasing. Fortunately, there are loads of recycled, upcycled, and natural materials that can also be carved into excellent stamps. Some can be composted after use, some can be recycled, and some can be kept until you’re next project, but they’re all great alternatives to store-bought lino blocks....
I admit that when my kids were guided into making a betta in a vase craft as part of a class on aquatic ecosystems, I was pretty stoked. It’s essentially what it sounds like, this “betta in a vase” business. The kids put clean glass marbles in the bottom of a one-gallon vase. They cut a clear plastic cup (yikes, I know, but bear with me) to fit into the top of the vase, and cut another hole in the bottom of the cup....
I have to admit I am running a little last this year. Normally by now I am already launching into Christmas stuff but I haven’t even started my Halloween goods yet. Last year I made a lot of recycled, upcycled and green Halloween crafts from things that normally get tossed in the recycling bin. I made pumpkins and cats from laundry soap bottles, decorative luminaries from tin cans, and all kinds of little creatures and critters from yogurt cups and even fun and frightening favor boxes out of cardboard toilet paper rolls....
Crafting a Green World has finally stepped into the fantastic world of Facebook and we want you to be our fan! That’s right, we’ve finally gotten further into the world of social media and know that many of you have too. So won’t you take a moment to fan us and tell your friends? We’ll be developing content for our Facebook fans as we move forward so expect content to be coming at you fast and furious once we get going....
I have sort of a crafty crush on Betz White. Between her book, Sewing Green, her zero waste sewing philosophy and her gorgeous line of organic cotton fabrics and sewing patterns, she’s a green crafty superstar and a real hero of mine. Now, White is expanding her green crafty influence even further through a licensing deal with Robert Kaufman fabrics as part of their Greenstyle collection! Starting in July, crafters will be able to pick up White’s designs on GOTS certified organic cotton wholesale and at stores all over the world....
Candy wrappers tend to be vibrant and pretty and decorative in a way that a lot of other trash isn’t, which makes them great candidates for upcycling, even if you don’t normally eat a lot of candy. We DON’T eat a lot of candy, and although my kid really wanted her ninth birthday party to be candy-themed, I still tried to keep it toned-down candy-wise, giving the party the “feel” of having a lot of candy without, you know, having a lot of candy....
