Instead, wow your kid’s friends with giant hunks of real gold treasure to hunt. The kids will love them, because they look way more awesome and like real loot than anything you can find in a big box party store. And if the kids do eventually get tired of playing with their gold nuggets, their parents can simply add them to their flower garden as decoration. Because this gold treasure?...
In the mornings, I MUST waft the scent of peppermint and rosemary essential oils through the air, lest I never escape the desire to just go back to bed, and so I’ve gotten into the habit of making my own rolled beeswax tealight candles. They’re quick and easy to make, inexpensive, and you can do them in any colors that you fancy. Read on to see how it’s done: Unless you’re a bigger DIY rock star than I am, you’ll need to first purchase beeswax sheets to roll....
If you don’t know much about native bees, then you might have heard that mason bees are a nuisance. They burrow holes in your house for their nests, people might say. You should poison them because they’re pests, people might tell you. Of course, you know better than that! Mason bees are part of our native bee population, and they’re valuable pollinators, especially for fruit trees. They rarely sting, and they never swarm....
Whether you’ve got a craft fair, street festival, urban yard sale, protest rally, or, yes, Girl Scout cookie booth in the works, a DIY sandwich board is an excellent, albeit old-school, way to get the word out. Here’s how to make a sandwich board with materials that you can get for free. People are suckers for other people wearing something weird, so a DIY sandwich board will get them looking at what you have to say, whatever it is that you have to say....
The fabrics have a suggested retail price of only $16.95 per yard, which is an amazing feat in the organic cotton market. Other big names in organic cotton prints, like Harmony Art and Daisy Janie, are $22-27 and $68 per yard respectively.
Check out this fabulous tutorial for how to make large DIY gift bows out of any paper you have on hand: gift wrap, magazines, scrap paper, pretty scrapbook paper, even old junkmail or maps. I love these DIY gift bows, because they’re a great way to reuse paper scraps and add embellishments to gifts without buying new. Reusing something old and replacing something new at the same time reduces your gift wrapping impact twice....
A clothesline in a sunny spot can do all that and bleach out soil and stains, to boot, again without the worry of harsh chemicals. This factor, combined with a very gentle handwashing and some pre-treatments, can restore even very stained and very valuable vintage fabrics. It can also get your kids’ grape juice stains out of your beloved childhood Snoopy sheet set. Here’s how: The first thing to know is that gentle treatments work slowly–all that stuff that makes stains disappear right before your eyes?...
For more inspiring fabric and wallpaper projects, I recommend checking out these DIY inspirations on Mod Green Pod: Bloom Quilt (shown at top) Wallpaper Cabinet Easy Drawstring Bags Tea Towels For continued inspiration subscirbe to the Mod Green Pod Blog. [Images courtesy Nancy Mims for Mod Green Pod]
What You Will Need: Old Christmas cards Scissors Picture frames How To Do It: Cut out the part of your card that you would like to frame. Put the card inside your frame Wasn’t that incredible easy? What cards in your collection could you save for art? This is such a simple and adorable idea! For more Christmas card ideas, check out our Happy New Year Banner from Old Christmas Cards and Seven Ways to Upcycle Greeting Cards posts!...
The beautiful textiles made by the likes of Kirin & Co., Pippijoe, and Mod Green Pod are inspiring and beautiful, but they carry a designer price tag. If you can’t afford designer hand-printed fabrics, consider screen printing your own. By printing your own fabric you can control the materials used, the design, and colors. Learn to Screen Print I recommend reading up on screen printing before you get started. While most hand printing methods seem overwhelming to a beginner, they are all quite easy to perfect with a little patience and practice....
One of the first items on any crafter’s list is a good pair of scissors. Being able to splice thread and cut a mean line is of utmost importance. Scissors can make or break a project. Luckily there is nifty pair of craft scissors made with recycled plastic. If you sew, you know that a good pair of sharp shears is vital and if you already have a pair that you love, learn how to extend their life by sharpening them, reducing the need for a new pair....
It’s been an awesome year, and I’ve loved getting to interact with you. Our readers are a huge part of what makes CAGW great, and we appreciate your comments, questions, and suggestions. I am so proud of the green crafts community that we are building here, and I’m excited to see it grow even more in 2014! This list of top 10 green crafts roundups and tutorials is one that you guys picked without even knowing it!...
Happy almost new year, you guys! It’s been an awesome crafty year, and we are all so glad that you guys could share it with us! We love reading your emails and comments, and we can’t wait to make 2013 just as fantastical. Why 37 posts? Why not! We pored through hundreds of posts from this year to find the ones that you read and commented on the most, and these were the best of the best....
New online knitting mag MetaPostModernKnitting arrived on the internet last week with the fashion forward in mind. Complete with great patterns, blog and articles, MPMK is a welcome edition to the online world. In their first issue, The Knitting Bully contemplates recycling as a fashion trend. The article questions the use of new clothing repurposed right out of the box, and marketed as “recycled,” and rightly so (take a look at that sweater/skirt....
Jessica Jones, from How About Orange, shares this wonderful tutorial for turning envelopes into gift bags, which she cutely nicknames “baglets”. The tutorial includes a printable template for a To/From label and tips for decorative touches like a scalloped edge or adding a ribbon handle. For other great eco-gift wrapping ideas try using comic strips or these tips from Danny Seo. [Images by Jessica Jones for How About Orange]
I’m busy dreaming up the new landscaping I want to try, ordering some new-to-me seed varieties, attempting to convince myself that I do NOT need more chicks this year (don’t I, though?), and planning what backyard games and activities my family might enjoy so I can get the gear ready. We love outdoor games, and we also love indoor games that get us off our butts for a bit. Here’s my list of my favorite outdoor and active games to DIY....
I’m currently working on a project to revamp our clipboards from dust-catching shelf-clutterers into something actually usable–otherwise, they’re off to Goodwill next weekend–but until then, join me in checking out these DIY upcycled clipboard projects from across the web. Clipboards actually ARE useful! Chalkboard Travel Toy: Along the lines of Wooly Willy, but with a package of chalk instead of a little magnet wand, this chalkboard clipboard travel toy from Apartment Therapy features a figure, hand-painted with chalkboard paint, that young travelers can embellish, wipe away, and embellish again....
Like beeswax, candelilla wax is totally natural. Unlike beeswax, though, it’s a plant product. Candelilla wax is made by boiling the leaves and stems of the candelilla shrub with a very low concentration of sulphuric acid. The resulting wax works great in many projects where you’d use beeswax, like making furniture polish or in cosmetics. You can even use it to make candles! Where to find Candelilla Wax The first place I’d check for candelilla wax is your local natural foods co-op....
The quilts were all visibly worn-looking, weak, and discolored along their fold lines. On my Nana’s friendship quilt, some of the color of the embroidery that served as the signature of the women who pieced the quilt had bled onto other parts of the quilt that they’d been shoved against for thirty years. The quilt on the hanger is in the worst shape–the plastic had stuck to it in a few spots (it’s a nine-patch my Nana made in the 1970s, out of polyester), and it didn’t really want to completely unfold anymore....
Wikipedia explains fair trade quite clearly as “an organized social movement and market-based approach to alleviating global poverty and promoting sustainability. The movement promotes the payment of a fair price as well as social and environmental standards in areas related to the production.” Based in Oneonta, New York, the Da’vida Fair Trade Store sells its own line of hand painted and hand spun yarns made from alpaca, wool and yak fibers....
