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Well, they do! The necklaces themselves look lovely, and if you’ve ever had the sudden impulse, while out and about, to get a closer look at anything from the details on a flower to the pattern of a friend’s fingerprints, then you’ll know that these necklaces are actually quite useful, too. This necklace project is a great beginner’s soldering project, as well, so if you’ve ever felt the desire to make those much more complicated microscope glass pendants or found object ornaments that need to be soldered, then you can start right here....

When thinking about more Mother’s Day ideas, I thought about how my mom prefers a plant rather than flowers. Flowers are more traditional on Mother’s Day, but environmentally they’re not so hot. Those bouquets come from far away, require lots of pesticides to grow, and often end up in the landfill after they wilt. A potted plant, on the other hand, can live for much longer and even does a teeny bit to help improve air quality!...

Crafting with old books is a bit of a touchy subject. Why cut up a perfectly good book just because you have a project idea or it happens to have a rockin’ cover? That makes perfect sense to me. Still, sometimes we end up with books that are too damaged to read, and at that point why not turn it into something new and useful, right? Over at Curbly.com, Chrisjob has a tutorial for turning a book into a super sweet purse!...

Our feral little murder-brat, the Marvelous Mr. Jones, LOVES his corrugated cardboard cat scratchers! I mean, he also loves scratching my chair legs still, but to be fair, he IS a feral little murder-brat… Corrugated cardboard, sliced and stacked edges out, has a texture that cats adore, and they really will use them, play with them, and sharpen their claws on them! These corrugated cardboard cat scratchers also require little to no other supplies to make, and when your cat wears them out, you can pop them right into the recycling bin, so there’s no extra burden on the waste stream....

The previous tenant of the home I just moved into left an old wooden desk in the storage shed. It would be beautiful with a makeover, but it’s missing several drawers. I’m not quite sure what to do with it yet, so I decided to give a purpose to one of the larger drawers this week. My roommate and I needed something to organize our jewelry, make-up, and perfumes in our bathroom, so I transformed the drawer into an organizer!...

My toddler learned how to say “bubbles” a few weeks ago, and we have basically been on the back porch ever since. Here’s how to make bubbles without the ubiquitous blue bottle of Dawn. My son, Darrol Henry, likes to watch me blow bubbles, but even more than that he likes to try to blow them himself. At 18 months old, his technique is still in the formative phase. Right now, it seems to involve sticking the bubble wand into his mouth or at least pressing it directly to his lips....

Even after the kids have outgrown their building blocks, there’s still a place for them in your home. These building block candle holders give a vintage look to a room, but my favorite part is that if you use alphabet blocks to make these candle holders, then you’ve got a built-in monogram! Add a couple more sets (the particular set in these photos is vintage, but isn’t valuable–extra sets would be easy to collect) and you can spell out words; think “Christmas” or “Happy Birthday....

Coffee sack burlap is a great sustainable material. It’s natural, biodegradable, and strong. Here is an easy tutorial on how to make a great shabby chic fabric box from an upcycled coffee sack. When I read how eco-friendly burlap is, I just had to craft with it. So when a local coffee shop owner practically threw a dozen coffee sacks at me and pleaded with me to take them, I felt like I just robbed a bank....

My son is three, and his love for art is starting to really bloom. Before, he enjoyed coloring or painting when I offered, but now he sits at the little art table in our kitchen and requests specific supplies. It’s time for me to step up my storage game to create something that he can access but that keeps supervision-needed supplies out of reach. These are some of the art storage ideas inspiring me right now – it’s probably going to take a couple of solutions to give our kitchen art area all of the storage it needs!...

The city of Leawood, Kansas, taught one little kid a very important lesson about local government this month: That it sucks. Spencer Collins, nine, built and set up a Little Free Library at the edge of his yard in Leawood, Kansas, in order to share books with friends and neighbors (I know, right? What a monster!). The Leawood City Council did what any responsible local government should do; they told Collins that it was a great idea, gave him a certificate of merit for his efforts to encourage literacy and a love of reading in the city’s children, and offered him a grant to help other kids build their own Little Free Libraries....

Out of all the wonderful craft books of 2024, here are some of my favorites: Brooklyn Tweed’s Knit and Crochet Blankets: Projects to Stitch for Home and Away, by Jared Flood I love the idea of a yarn-maker publishing a craft book that uses their yarns, especially when the yarn-maker is focused on green, sustainable practices and US-based production. Knitting craft books work more or less well depending on how you, personally, like to see your instructions, so you might want to preview this book to see how well the chart sizes and written instructions work for you before you dive in....

No – it’s true! A new magazine has premiered on newsstands that features “handcrafted projects and content that use natural and organic materials derived from sustainable and recycled materials.” Debuting with their Winter 2008 issue, Living Crafts magazine will be published quarterly and is currently available at bookstores, via subscription and at major crafty events. I haven’t had a chance to flip through a copy yet, but from the info on their website, it sounds like a gem: Enjoy a variety of projects from knitting, sewing, and doll making to soulful articles on bead necklaces and felting in our premiere issue of Living Crafts....

This mini heart bunting is a low-key gift, since it’s nice and small. Big hearts are corny, but small hearts are cute! Small also means that you can upcycle some teeny scraps, which is always an eco-friendly bonus for any project. The wool felt scraps that I used to make these little buntings are so small that I’d honestly have thrown them away, nearly guilt-free, if I hadn’t thought up this use for them....

The wax is what forms the honey combs that the bees make to hold the honey. It is harvested when the honey is harvested and once they are stripped of the honey they can be melted and rendered to use for many purposes. Some use it as a furniture polish or a lubricant for sticky windows or drawers. The most obvious use is for candles. You can get beeswax in two different forms in which to make candles from....

Mother’s Day is coming up on May 11! Instead of cut flowers that wilt and die, how about some a sweet bunch of pom pom flowers that never go bad? This sweet forever bouquet is a Mother’s Day gift idea from Michael Ann Made, and it’s a great opportunity to bust that yarn stash! Tiny pom poms are a cute use for the end of a skein, and you can even combine smaller amounts of yarn to make multicolored poms from even the smallest bits in your stash....

Full disclosure: My kids have two Rainbow Looms, and they LOVE them. There are miniature rubber bands everywhere! Sometimes in the evening, my younger kid and I will hang out on my bed, watching YouTube tutorials and struggling our way through rubber band bouncy balls and keychains and hexfish bracelets. So we’re not Rainbow Loom haters in our house, and yet… I do kind of hate them. Mind you, I can’t completely dislike anything that gets my kids creating, but there are SO many eco-friendly Rainbow Loom alternatives....

This is a fun, easy project for adults or children. Get creative, think of interesting ways to decorate your bowl or use selected words from a magazine on your first and last layers to make it a word art bowl. I’ve tried to make bowls using the outside of one as a mold. I like the idea of using the inside of the bowl better. The only trick is to grease up the inside of the bowl so that your dried paper bowl will release....

When choosing yarn for a small child to craft with, it’s tempting to go for the cheapest acrylic yarn ever made. You know that your kid, however much she may express a wish to make pom-poms or try out her knitting spool, is going to do more tangling than actual creating, and quality yarn can seem too pricey to risk wasting. However, we all know how much better we, ourselves, craft when we use quality materials....

Cereal is the third most popular food product in the U.S.. When you add up all those bowls of Lucky Charms and Cheerios, that equals a whole lot of empty cereal boxes! Rather than send all that perfectly good cardboard to the landfill, try one of these ways to give it a whole new life! These tutorials would work well with cereal boxes, empty six-pack boxes, or the kind from frozen dinners: I’m sure you guys have made some awesome cereal box crafts, too!...

Sure some people really need that wrapping paper rip to feel like they are opening a gift but these bags are so beautiful they are a gift themselves. Even though I can’t sew I have a love affair with fabric. Of course I have a love affair with paper, too. I think I just like pretty textured things. It is the artist in me. Anyway I am amazed that everyone doesn’t make their own fabric bags....