Think Crafts Blog – Craft Ideas and Projects – CreateForLess

Welcome guest blogger, Mable who is an avid reader of craft blogs & magazines and has aspirations to improve her crafting skills.

Mable Craftsalot  

I love going to craft fairs, Saturday Markets and festivals and browsing the craft booths. I always come home with a new pair of earrings, purse, hand-made soap, photography print… What’s great about crafting is it’s highly unlikely you will see that piece anywhere else. I love reading craft magazines and blogs, I love the pictures! I’ve been reading Think Crafts for the last year and it always makes me anxious to get crafting. I’m what I like to call a “challenged craft dabbler”. My ‘challenges’ are getting impatient with my lack of skills, getting distracted by something shiny, wanting to try all crafts and not having any craft projects around.

My craft dabbles have so far included: crocheting, knitting, scrapbooking, clay work, beading, and using my knifty knitter as an easy way to make hats. Majority of my craft dabbling has been with knitting. I have perfected the knitted scarf! I like to give handmade gifts so my relatives have gotten a scarf every Christmas while I was in college. Since they live in North Dakota, the scarf was practical and very easy and inexpensive to make. Unfortunately my knitting skills have yet to progress past rectangular shapes, but I plan to try other shapes and even patterns very soon! And now that I’ve graduated, it’s time to step up my crafting game.

As a beginner, I have found it’s best to start to learn a craft with a kit or a book. Kits are convenient because the instructions are simple and the pictures are going to be exactly what you are going to be doing. And kits come with the supplies you need. I learn best with pictures because I like to see how to do it, then once I learn the skill I can adjust or change how I feel. 

My goal is to finish the craft projects I start. I want to find project ideas and kits that allow a newbie like me to be able to be successful and also learn a few things. Also I want to improve my skills and maybe find some I didn’t even know I had! For my first project I wanted something new! Something fun!

Everything you need to make a sock monkey

I found this Sock Monkey kit on CreateForLess and had to try it. This kit was easy for a sewing novice and came with everything you need to make your own sock monkey. The kit came with 2 tube socks, felt, buttons, material, instructions, thread, embroidery floss and even a sewing needle. However, you will need to use a sewing machine and have fiberfil stuffing. Making the sock monkey I hand-stitched on the arms, tail, head, ears and hat and also learned a few embroidery stitches for the face and teddy bear. I placed a plastic bag of popcorn kernels in the seat of the sock monkey before I closed it up so it would sit up straighter. Hopefully you can’t tell from the picture, but I really need to improve my blanket stitch (well all my stitches actually!)

Meet PeeJay!

Keep the instructions when you’re done because you never know when you will have two tube socks that need to be turned into a sock monkey!