Think Crafts Blog – Craft Ideas and Projects – CreateForLess

By Kid’s Craft Contributor, Gillian from the blog “Dried Figs and Wooden Spools”.

The summer I turned ten, my friends and I were all about friendship crafts. We made knotted friendship bracelets, walking around with in-progress projects pinned to the hems of our shorts, we collected plastic charms and tried to make our own to trade and wear, and we were obsessed with friendship pins. Our the laces of our shoes jingled and glittered with as many pins as could be crammed between the eyes of the shoes. We carried bubblegum tins around full of beads and pins and got in trouble the first weeks of class when we tried to make pins inside our desks during math.

But as much as I loved it way back then, I hadn’t thought much about friendship pins in twenty years, until I was puttering around the fabric store and found myself in amongst the seed beads. Although my son is younger than I was the summer that friendship pins hit it big at my school, he had no trouble at all working through my entire supply of safety pins over the course of 20 minutes. Simple and satisfying, it’s one of those crafts that kids will always love, especially on a too hot to go outside summer day.

You’ll need:

Seed Beads – lots of colors
1 inch long safety pins – as many as you can spare

Pour the beads into a bowl for easy access and open up a couple of pins to get them started. Beads can be strung randomly, all one color or in a pattern, just be sure to leave enough room at the top to fasten the pin back together. Once they are done, pin them onto the bottom lace of tennis shoes, stack a row on them onto a hair-clip or fasten them around rubber bracelets so your kids can show off and trade their treasures.

Enter to win this craft pack from Paper Accents! This prize comes with a Pound O’ Paper, Create Your Own Journal and Scrapbook, as well as rectangle and pennants chipboard pieces.

The Pound O’ Paper are wonderful packs of paper that comes with a new variety each time. These varieties are great for making cards, invitations, tags or adding special accents to scrapbook and memory pages. It’s an assortment pack , the sizes and kind of paper change with each package. Create Your Own Journals are made with heavy chipboard on the front and back with 25 pages inside. Have fun decorating and personalizing these journals with stamps, stickers, embellishments, marking pens, and more. Each journal is spiral bound so they are easy to flip and stay together! Create Your Own Chipboard Pennants are great for Banners, Seasonal Sentiments, Names and much more. Made with heavy weight chipboard, they are acid free, and ready to decorate to your personal taste.

Every Friday we’ll post a giveaway on Think Crafts and all you have to do is comment on the blog post answering the question of the week. We’ll pick the winner and contact them via email. Deadline is midnight tonight and the winner will be announced Monday. One entry per person please. Contest opened to all US residents, no purchase necessary.

Question of week: What is your favorite summer memory from your childhood, or your children’s.

By Kid’s Craft Contributor, Gillian from the blog “Dried Figs and Wooden Spools”.

Whether you’re sending the kids off to camp this summer or just dropping them at your parents for the weekend, it’s always nice to get a note from them so you can see what they are up to. Send them off on their adventure with a set of cards made by their own hands (and don’t forget the pre-addressed and stamped envelopes!)  to help ensure you get a few scribbled lines from them while they are away having fun!

Here’s what you’ll need:

Blank card or half a sheet of cardstock for each card
Unpopped bubblewrap
Craft Paint (any colors!)
Foam brush

1. Brush paint in a pattern over the bubbles, try stripes or paint each dot a different hue, let them go a little crazy with the paint. You’ll want to work fairly quickly so that the paint doesn’t dry before you make your print, but even if some of the dots don’t print, you’ll still get a fun look!

2. Center your paper over the painted bubbles and smooth so that every bubble comes in contact with the paper.

3. Peel the paper back carefully and lay flat to dry.

4. Fold into cards and pack them up with the envelopes in their bags and they are ready to go!

By General Crafts Contributor Amy, from the Blog “Mod Podge Rocks!”

As a crafter, I have TONS of bags.  Some of the bags I have are merely functional rather than good looking, so I like to embellish them.  Ones of the ways I embellish things are with pins!  Pins can be small or large, and they are easy to make with supplies that you probably already have on hand.  Pins are great scrapbusters!  They can also be made pretty quickly and give as gifts.  As you can see, my pin is inspired by summer.

To make, you’ll need to gather these supplies:

Chipboard shape  – approximately 2″ x 4″
K&Company Berry Sweet Paper and Chipboard Fruit Embellishments 
Mod Podge Matte 
FolkArt Acrylic Paint – Yellow Citron, Hot Pink (or coordinating colors)
Pink Rhinestones  
Wood Letter – initial of your choice
Pin back 
Craft Glue 
Scissors 
Pencil

Take a small piece of scrapbook paper a little larger than your chipboard piece and trace.  Cut the shape out and set aside.

Paint your chipboard shape and letter – since they are so small, I just painted them both on both sides.  Cover completely and allow to dry.

Spread Mod Podge on the top of your chipboard shape.  Grab the paper you cut and smooth down thoroughly.  You can use your hands – I always use a brayer because it works *really* well.  Allow to dry for 15 – 20 minutes.

You are now ready to coat the top.  Give a medium layer of Mod Podge and allow to dry for 15 – 20 minutes.  I also put a coat of Mod Podge onto my letter “A.”

Time to add embellishments!  I used craft glue to add the letter “A,” the strawberry and then one rhinestone in each corner for a little bling.  Allow to dry.

By Kid’s Craft Contributor, Gillian from the blog “Dried Figs and Wooden Spools”.

If you’re a crafter, or a blogger, or both, you’ve probably run into times when people have asked about something you’ve made and how they can get one. It’s one of those moments when you think “hmm, I wish I had a business card!” except, it’s hard to justify a whole box of business cards when you just need one here and there. And what if what you’re crafting changes, as it does with most crafty people. Do you order a whole new set of cards? Maybe you just want to have your contact information handy for meeting other moms. What’s a crafty gal to do?

Instead of weighing your desk down with a big box of cards, grab some shipping labels and a stamp kit and have an ever changeable business card making set always at your fingertips! These tags are also handy for gift wrapping, organizing and a myriad of other things, so don’t be afraid to buy in bulk!

Here’s what you need

Letter stamp kit
Fun stamps
 Box of Shipping Labels
Stamp Pad 

Before you break out the tweezers and teeny letters, figure out what you want your card to say. Do you want a phone number or just an email address? Do you have a website or a blog? How do you want your name to look? Do you have a tagline? Write it all down so you can lay out your stamp easily, then pull out those tweezers and start arranging letters. I found my custom stamp kit with the small letters at a business supply store.

Once you have your words ready to go, look through your collection of fun stamps (come on, I know you have some!) and try out a few on your card. Or try cutting the end off the card with pinking sheers, you can even glue small strips of ribbon to the card or play around with embossing. Try out several combinations until you have a few you love and stamp away. Remove the wire from the tag and tuck a few in your bag. The next time someone stops you at the park and asks “where did you get that?” you can come back with “Why, I made it, here’s my card!” And a small business is born

We can tell it wasn’t easy to only pick 3 craft items to take if you were ever stranded. There was a lot of  thought in your answers! Congratulations to Penny who was randomly selected as the winner of Free Stuff Friday and the MiMi Essentials Scrapbook  Tool Tote!

The Essential Scrapbook Tool Tote in Kiwi with Chocolate accents is a durable water resistant shoulder tote that keeps your tools at your finger tips. It boasts a patented locking wing system and a strap to hang it from a doorknob or your wheeled tote handle. A coordinating Kiwi interior lining complemented by decorative contrast stitching gives this tote a functional and fashionable look. It cleverly unites storage and style for the crafter on the go.

Penny’s winning answer to ”You’re stranded on a deserted island, what 3 craft products do you bring?” …

“Camera for photographic journel of my situation
Pack of Crochet Hooks
Skeins of Yarn

My main hobby is papercrafting and just can’t see doing that much on an island. But crocheting a blanket or something would be useful. Would have to bring a camera though to journel the experience. Make one heck of a scrapbook on my rescue!”

By General Crafts Contributor, Shelly from the blog “Pickwick & Plum”.  

Ever notice how similar Champagne stoppers and vintage cafe chairs look? I’ve been playing with a variety of treatments and here are three that I think might inspire you to ‘look anew’ at that bottle of bubbly you’ve got hid in your pantry. So, pour yourself a glass and plug in the hot glue gun.

Materials for this project might include:

Vintage buttons and millinery
Scraps of trim or rick rack
Odd metal parts or toys
Plastic bird, or sticker
Tinsel
Beads

I recommend letting the seat lead the direction of the rest of the chair. For all three of these, I picked a vintage button for the seat. Only on the Tree Chair, did I flatten one of the sides – but it helped with getting the branches to line up properly. The metal backing of the Blue Chair is half an old drawer plate (the part of a dresser drawer pull that sits against the dresser). It’s nice and thin metal, so it bent well. Although I did help it along with my handy Nibblers (a great tool for metal available at hardware stores).

At the back of the Blue Chair, I stuck a small rod of brass through the button shank. I added some vintage trim and a velvet ribbon to finish it off. It looks a bit art deco in design.

For the tree chair, I simply hot glued some branches together in a row and attached them to the flattened part of the button. I think  I used my heat gun on some old christmas tinsel. Got it nice and scrunched for the nest and sewed three ivory buttons onto it. I then attached a bird sticker to one of the branches. I wrapped the seat with some vintage trim in gold and blue.

This Mod Chair is made using a part of an old lamp. Where the light bulb would be, is the upholstered button. I attached this to the metal with 2 part epoxy. The back seat cushion I made by using another fabric covered button. I dented the middle so it looked more ‘stuffed’ and stuck a metal flower in the center – but you could actually make a small fabric cushion out of some fabric and foam. I wrapped the seat here in red rick-rack to match the red ‘legs’ of the stopper.