Whatever gentle reminder that you often require, it’s easy to create a miniature bunting stenciled with a meaningful word. It will look nice in your home, and more importantly, every time you happen to glance at it you’ll remember to re-focus on where your intentions should be. Here’s how to create your own inspirational bunting. Next » Select Your Fabric
Worried that in twenty years you’ll have trouble remembering what it was that your little kid wanted more than anything else for Christmas this year? Record their wish lists for posterity with an ornament that will remind the whole family every year that in 2012, your younger daughter wanted a dragon for Christmas and your older daughter wanted a computer game that does not actually exist (Trust me: I Googled!...
So you made candles, or preserved autumn leaves, or cooked up furniture polish, or crafted modeling wax for the kiddos, and now you’re left with a crock pot or bain-marie half-full of melted beeswax (or its vegan wax substitutes). Here’s the easy way that I store my leftover wax, measured into known amounts so that future projects are easier to put together, and pretty enough that the wax can be stored right out in the open, leaving more storage space for my fabric stash: To easily save and store your wax, you simply need to know that you can pour melted wax into any mufifn tins, ice cube trays, or novelty silicon molds and pop it out when hardened, leaving behind no residue....
One cardboard spool has Art Garfunkel’s face on it, and another has Cookie Monster’s. One shows a scene from Gone with the Wind, and one shows that cocky grin sported by Maverick in Top Gun. I crafted my DIY cardboard embroidery floss spools from old cardboard record album covers, but maybe you’d prefer to use cereal boxes, so that you can sport Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam on your spools, or brown mailing boxes, so that you can ink in your own labels and clever sketches....
Whether I dye play silks with Kool-aid or dye play silks with professional acid dyes, that first rinse and wash is always make-or-break time. Will excess dye bleed onto an undyed portion of the fabric? Will it bleed onto a section of silk that I’ve already dyed a different color? Probably. To vat-dye multi-colored silks with clean colors and smooth transitions, there are a few different methods that work. This particular method is one of the easiest, since it blocks off all of the fabric that you’re not currently dyeing, allowing you to vat dye and machine wash as usual....
The paper labels are easy to clean off of jars, fortunately, and then all you’re left with is figuring out how to disguise those often branded, never matching jar lids. Whether you’re fond of fabric or paper, paint or found objects, matching or distinctive, the following list should give you all the ideas that you need to make your jar lids fresh, new, and not at all spaghetti sauce-related. Next »
It’s super simple to make reusable baby wipes to reduce waste and save yourself some cash! For the eco-mama, cloth diapering is a no-brainer, right? You save money in the long run by using cloth, and you keep pounds and pounds of soiled disposable diapers out of the landfill at the same time. A win for you and the planet! Cloth diapers rock, but what about wipes? Those disposable wet wipes add up, too – both in your budget and in the landfill....
It’s one of life’s little disappointments. You pick up a ballpoint pen, one in which you can clearly see that there is ink still in the barrel, and yet… it will not write. Sigh. A ballpoint pen can behave this way when ink has dried around the ball or in the ink tube adjacent to the ball, keeping the ball from moving freely or new ink from flowing over it when it does....
If you’re a fan of wooden pallet crafts, then you’ve certainly come across the one perennial hitch in your project plans: First, you’ve got to figure out how to take apart a pallet. Sigh… You can use a hammer and crowbar, but that process takes a while, uses lots of muscle, and usually involves accidentally splitting some of the planks, meaning that you may have to take apart a second pallet to get all the scrap wood that you need....
All of their treasures, whether they be crinoid fossils or shed snakeskins or, sigh, animal bones, get their time to shine on our nature windowsill. I tend to love everything (as much as I can…) exactly the way that it is, but my older kid, in particular, has a scientific mind and likes her specimens identified and prepared and “properly” displayed. She likes her fossils identified, her leaves pressed, and her bones whitened....
Paper artist Patricia Zapata of A Little Hut created these amazing works of art as a solution to her junk mail problem. The framed piece is made up of tiny strips of newsprint randomly glued to card-stock. It was then covered with an abstract floral card-stock frame. See a video podcast of her process on the Craftzine blog. Patricia’s adorable junk mail trees are simply made of junk mail and bristol paper....
Our local food pantry badly needed something fun (and quiet and still) for kiddos to do while their parents shopped for groceries. For a Girl Scout project, my own kiddos decided to build the pantry an Early Literacy Center, a high-falutin’ term for a bookshelf, donated books, homemade crayons, and plenty of paper. We parents helped, and the entire project came together over a couple of weeks. Here’s how we did it:...
Trying to store a bunch of cookie cutters is the pits. For several years, I’d been using a drawer underneath our kitchen table to hold our cookie cutters, because that’s where they all seemed to fit on the day that I first unpacked them. Of course, we’ve acquired more cookie cutters since then, dragons and castles and Girl Scout trefoils, and not only did they no longer really fit, but the kids were unconcernedly smashing them in their overarching goal of simply getting that drawer closed again whenever they dared to open it....
I completely agree with etsy seller Letter Perfect Designs, who says that some buttons are mini works of art. I can hardly stand to do something useful with my buttons, or even to wear them as jewelry around my neck, because then I can’t just sit and stare at them! Instead, one of my favorite things to do lately is to make these button monograms–I have an entire alphabet that I’ve made out of vintage buttons, brown paper bags, upholstery remnants, and archival mat board....
Or maybe it reminds you of your undergrad years, spending hours in the darkroom in the basement of the union, a hobby that you gave up a few years later when you got pregnant and the idea of the chemicals started to skeev you out. Or does it remind you of how you totally want to learn to do gocco or screen printing, but it seems kind of hard and requires more equipment thn you have the money for?...
We’ve had crafty business on the brain this week! On Sunday, Julie wrote about salvaged setups for outdoor shows, and yesterday, I posted about recovering after a long day of vending. So what about your promotional materials? It’s important to have some sort of take-away at your booth so folks who don’t have cash on hand can find you later. Here are a few eco-friendly resources for making or printing your business cards!...
Here are five fabulous ways to use up every bit of fabric scrap that is taking up valuable real estate in your studio. You can make flowers for brooches, headbands, embellishments, or even as necklaces. You can either make them using a simple tutorial or buy PDF patterns online. But whatever you use to make them, you will use up all your scraps to make more room for other sewing supplies in your studio....
Although I’ve been a green crafter for a while now, it’s only been fairly recent that I’ve started to take a look into really greening my children’s art supplies. My excuse has always been, well, we use too many crayons/colored pencils/pieces of clay to afford the really high quality brands. But then, in a fit of organization, I took a hard look around our shared studio space and thought…hmmm. Do two children really need a gallon jug full to the brim with half-used crayons?...
The thing about crafters is that we acquire our stashes with creative intentions. Sometimes it can be hard to let that go. I still see promise at the back of the craft closet. Projects I used to be excited about are getting stale though. After browsing this event’s Flickr photos from last year, I’m delighted with the possibilities of the supply swap concept. Just behold that mountain of fabric! I think I might be able to kick this hording habit after all....
Buy a brand of tissue paper that’s made from recycled paper pulp, compost the scraps when you’re finished, and if you do both, you’ll find that tissue paper is a craft supply that doesn’t contribute to deforestation or add anything to the waste stream. Curious about what kinds of crafts you can actually DO with tissue paper? Check out my list of favorite tissue paper crafts below and get inspired!...
