Think Crafts Blog – Craft Ideas and Projects – CreateForLess

I started rubberstamping over 20 years ago as a way to stamp out my frustrations as a not so talented artist. My husband can draw, but I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler. I admire those who have put in the time to learn and practice the art of drawing, yet for me it is easier to become an artist by inking a rubberstamp and pressing that image onto a surface. Stamps and all that is stamping have come a long way since my primitive beginnings.

I gave up rubberstamping a few years ago. I gave away most of my stamp collection and all the accessories that go with stamping like inks, embossing powders, markers, watercolor pencils, and heat guns. I saved my favorite stamps; mainly sea life and florals. I stored them all away safe from the heat and light. It was a tough decision. But I wanted to concentrate on other crafts.

I stamped onto acetate to create this card.

Recently, I’m feeling that old stamping itch again. I’ve moved my stamps to an area closer to my workstation here in the studio. I’ve been looking at all the new inks and embossing powders. I ordered some watercolor pencils and a set of cool markers. I got out a box of my favorite projects reviewing how delightful rubberstamping can be. I love the techniques of coloring stamped images and using those images to create a card or altered book.

They say everything old is new again. I’m re-discovering my joy of rubberstamping and it is exciting. Is there a craft you put aside? Do you ever feel the pull and want to give it another try? I’ll let you know what I find in my new stamping adventures!

Guest Blogger, Gillian, from the Blog “Dried Figs and Wooden Spools”.

Ahhh, Plastic. Where would our children’s art projects be without it? Remember that commercial from a few years ago, Plastic makes it Possible? Well, plastic does indeed make it possible. It doesn’t matter how many hand made, toxin free, eco friendly wooden toys I buy my kids; they like plastic. They like shrinky dinks (which I admit are totally fun but also a little scary) they like foam stickers, they like the cheap plastic balls at the toy store, we’re even reading a book in which one of the characters is named Plastic, and they love it.

And to be honest, so do I. My son has spent at least two hours a day for the past week obsessivly making various things out of Perler Beads. Remember those? I think they’ve been around since the times of the Dinosaurs. I certainly remember spending hours of my childhood carefully designing cats and dogs and soccer balls out of them for my mother to iron together. And now I may have to buy stock in them. If they can keep him this busy all summer, they are worth their weight in gold, which admittedly, wouldn’t be that much since they are about as light as a bag of feathers, but you get my point.

So far Briton has created balls and stars and a dinosaur or three, several suns and some kind of psychedelic shapes that have no name. All of his teachers got something the last day of school. The neighbor girl now has her very own Perler Briton. My husband has at least four on his desk at work and I have a kaleidoscope of plastic thingys artfully arranged on my dresser between my Tiffany pearls and my Grandmothers jewelry box. All hail king plastic.

Does your child love plastic they way mine does? What kinds of cool thing have they made from Perler beads? And do you secretly love to watch them melt together the way I do? Come on…spill!

Click here, to read more of Gillian’s blog posts.

Returning Guest Blogger, Diane Gilleland, from the Blog and Podcast “CraftyPod“.

I used to Drink out of my Bracelet.

Tiffany Threadgould wrote the greatest article for CRAFT 03 about turning plastic soda bottles into all kinds of useful things. I especially loved her Photo Cuff bracelets.

Ever since that article, I’ve been eyeing the plastic bottles in my recycle bin, and last night, lightning struck. Here’s my bottle-bracelet variation, using felt!

A 16-oz (500 ml) water bottle makes a particularly good bracelet, fitting my wrist comfortably with a little room to spare. Besides, many water bottles have nifty horizontal ridges around their middles, which make for perfect cutting guidelines.

You can use a utility knife or even a sharp kitchen knife to poke through the side of your bottle. (Be very careful with this! Make sure the bottle is on a stable surface, and anchor it so it want roll or jump.)

Using the slit you’ve just made as your starting point, cut all the way around the bottle, using one of those ridges as your guide. Scissors will work fine for this – use the big, tough ones you keep around for the heftier cutting jobs.

Now, make a perpendicular cut (see the blue arrow above). Then choose another ridge to cut along – based on how wide you want your finished cuff to be. Cut around the bottle again.

Great! You now have a rough bracelet. You’ll want to trim about 1/4″ to 1/2″ off of each end, so there’s a little gap in the middle. You’ll also want to round off the ends. I used a circle template and traced it with a Sharpie, but you can also trim the ends free-hand.

Now, cut two strips of felt. They should be a little longer than your plastic form, and about 1/4″ wider. Decide at this point how you want to decorate your bracelet. There are lots of possibilities here – you can do felt applique, or bead embroidery, or regular embroidery, or silkscreen, or stencils . . . .

Do all your embellishment on one of the felt pieces. I recommend keeping about 1/2″ of felt at each end of this strip unadorned, because you may want to trim it off later. (I didn’t do that here, and it came back to bite me . . . .)

Now, put your two pieces of felt together, right sides out. Begin joining them with a whipstitch along one of the long edges. Stop stitching when you reach the rounded end. (By the way, futuregirl has the best tutorial ever on how to stitch felt.)

Insert your plastic form into the felt, and adjust the felt as necessary so it lies smoothly against the plastic. Wiggle the plastic form a bit so that you have a roughly equal amount of felt at each of the rounded ends of the bracelet. Now, you might need to trim a little felt away from the ends, so that you have about 1/8″ sticking out beyond the plastic form.

After that, continue your whip-stitching until you’ve stitched the felt together completely.

And that’s it! These bracelets are lightweight and comfortable to wear, and hold their shape beautifully.

Be sure to check out Tiffany’s website for lots more great reclaimed-material projects, including a soda bottle candy dish.

To read more of CraftyPod, Visit her website.

 After reconnecting with many of my designer friends at a recent trade show I discovered many have wonderful and inspiring blogs!

Meet Gail Friend. I love reading her blog especially Pink Fridays! There is a wonderful musical track while you read… very relaxing.  I also enjoyed her Show and Tell posts. Do you remember Show and Tell at school?

Meet Sheryl Westleigh. Her blog is full of sculture and delightful jewelry designs.  It’s pure pleasure to browse through the posts.  The images are crisp and clean.

Meet Madeline Faiella. Madeline enjoys many creative techniques and includes links to some fabulous creative sites.  She’s a fire cracker and her blog has energy!

Meet Phyllis Dobbs. If you enjoy and love quilting then you must visit with Phyllis! I learned so much from her various show reviews. 

Do you have any blogs you can’t live without?  Let me know so I can check them out too!

Guest Blogger, Gillian, from the Blog “Dried Figs and Wooden Spools”.

Nope, I kid you not, this project will take you less than a minute, and I guarantee you have everything you need in your house RIGHT AT THIS MOMENT. And since Father’s Day is almost upon us and the kids and I just finished wrapping a Father’s day gift, I thought this might be a good little sit-down-before-dinner-and-make-something kind of project.

I used to do this with my class, back in the days when I taught where school didn’t let out for summer till the second week of June so you get to make Father’s Day cards with your kids. It’s one of those projects that looks so cool and takes so little.

So, ready? Set your timers (but don’t start till you get your materials because that will take you, oh, at least another minute, maybe two)

First your supplies. You will need 1 sheet of white paper. Really this can be any size and any paper weight. Personally I prefer a half sheet of regular old card stock so the finished card will be a 4 ish by 5 ish, an easy size to find an envelope for. And it could be any color, but I think white looks best.

Also a scrap of some other paper, about 1 inch by three inches long. Bigger if you are making a bigger card. This could be wrapping paper, construction paper, part of a cereal box or even just white paper that your kids color. If you are a scrapbooker, here’s a great place to use up a little bit of left over patterned border or paper. Anything will do.

Tape or glue. Tape works best, but if your six year old has recently taken to making tape sculptures like mine, then you are always out, glue will do. Lastly, scissors.

That’s it. See I told you, you had everything you needed!

OK. Onto the card, go ahead, time yourself.

First: fold the paper in half and crease it firmly.

Second: With the folded side on top, estimate about a sixth of the way down the narrower side of the card, cut a slit one third of the way in, repeat on the other side.

Step 2

Third: Fold the little flaps you just made in at an angle as shown. Do you see it? Yep, it’s a shirt! Now all you need is the tie, which brings us to step.

Step 3

Four: From the scrap of colored paper cut a tie shape that will go almost, but not all the way, down to the edge of the card.

Step 4

Fifth: Slide a piece of tape in between the two parts of the tabs to hold down the “collar” and then use a little loop of tape to fasten the tie on. And your done!

Happy Father's Day!

Seriously, how friggin cute is that? Cute enough that even after seven Father’s days, my kids dad will still like it. And I’m sure yours will too (or your dad! I’ve sent them to mine, even daddy’s of grown up girls like homemade Father’s day cards! I promise!)

Are you making a Father’s day gift this year? Let us know what brilliant things you’ve created for the men in your life!

*Remember Father’s Day is this Sunday!*

For more of Gillian blog posts, read them here.

Guest Blogger, Gillian, from the Blog “Dried Figs and Wooden Spools”.

In two weeks my daughter Evelyn will be turning three. And unlike her last two birthday’s which consisted of a few family members and a cake, this time we are going for a full out party. And since my little girl thinks no day is complete without a tutu and a crown, we’re not just doing a party, we’re doing a fairy princess tea party, with all the glittery, poofy, ribbony details.

So for the past two weeks I’ve been plotting, planning, gluing and glittering things for the party. We’ve got princess crowns in the works, cupcake recipes to try (with white frosting so we don’t get stains on our pretty dresses) doilies and decorations for the table to plan and even the princess dress hanging in the closet.

Today’s project was the invitations. Now I may be crazy, but I just can’t do those mass produced, fill in the blank invite. There’s nothing wrong with them, and someday I’m sure I’ll find myself filling one out, but at this stage in my children’s lives, I like to go whole hog. We’ve had oragami box invitations, dinosaur bone invitations and hotwheel cars pulling birthday wishers banners. And for Flower Fairy Princess Tea Party invitiations I thought to myself, “What does every flower fairy princess need? A magic wand! That’s what!” So magic wands it was.

Starting with some unpainted flowers mounted on dowels (I thought about stars but I could just imagine the tales of siblings being poked in the eye with pointy stars) I painted the stems and the flower (pink! Of course!) added lots of ribbons for swishy magicy fun, and lettered the invitation information on some pretty die cut cards and topped it off with just enough to be pretty and not irritating glitter spray. So, how did they fair? Well my daughter shrieked with glee when she saw the bundle of them on the table and then spent the rest of the evening dancing around waving her wand (because I had to make one for her too!) and “ZING!ing” everyone she passed. So I guess they’re a hit.

Fairy Princess Tea Party Birthday Invitations

A Flower Fairy Tea Party in honor of Evelyn's 3rd Birthday

Now onto the crowns, and the cakes and the table decorations and….Well, check back here and you’ll get to see.

So what great party ideas do you have? Pass them on! Share the love! And the glitter!

Click here, to read more of Gillian’s blog posts.

You can find the project instructions for this sunflower coaster set on FaveCrafts.com

We all need inspiration and sometimes flat out help coming up with fun stuff to make. I’m always out looking on the web for project sites. Sometimes I make the project, sometimes it inspires me to come up with a design of my own.

Here are some great project sites!

Stacy Sews  Stacy is a fabric junkie and I can relate. I love her blog! You’ll find projects, but also book reviews, celebrity style watch, tool reviews, and tutorials!

Fave Crafts Crafts from every category of techniques plus tips and videos.  I’m a bit bias as I’m the editorial consultant for the site!

Craft Projects The site owner says she’s been seeking craft projects since the day the net was born and she’s got a great collection.

Family Crafts Family crafting is what it is all about! Project for all age groups with a focus on our younger artists and crafters.

I really like it when sites display the current popular tags like FaveCrafts.com. If you scroll down the page you’ll see a list of tags like: Afghan, Baby, Birthdays, Decorating Ideas, Painting, Woodworking.  This tells you what other crafters are up to!