Think Crafts Blog - Craft Ideas and Projects - CreateForLess

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

How to Make a Wallet Shrine

Our Church of Craft project this month was Shrine Wallets. These are based on Mexican Shrine Wallets, which are small, tri-fold pocket shrines. Unfolded, they reveal pictures of saints, a miniature rosary, and a printed prayer folded up into a pocket. There’s a photo of one here. My version is a more generalized pocket shrine, which can commemorate anything you like. I love the idea of carrying one around in your bag as a reminder of your favorite people, places, or things.

It all begins with two pieces of felt, cut to the same size. Mine are 3.5″ tall by 5.5″ long, but you can really make them any size you like.

You’ll want to mark the center of each piece. I do this by folding each one in half, and placing a couple of pins along the fold. These pins help keep you from placing any embellishments over the fold - because that could become a problem later on.

. . . Did someone say “embellishments?” Now’s the time for those. It’s so much easier to decorate your felt pieces before you assemble them into a shrine. So you can really go to town here - embroidery is great, ric rac is great, beads and sequins and felt applique. Here are some samples I have in progress:

(Learn to make these ric rac flowers at Primrose Design. I love them!) 

You can add photographs, too! I glued this one down to the camel-colored piece with good old Aleene’s Tacky Glue, and then glued the light-blue frame over it. (I did the couching on the light blue before I glued it down.) Those are my great-grandparents - aren’t they cute?

And you can add stuff like little pockets, and tags, and charms. You’ll quickly become addicted to this part.

Once you’ve torn yourself away from embellishing, it’s time to assemble your shrine. Put the two pieces together, right sides facing out. Join them along three sides with a whip stitch. But leave the top open.

Now, use those pins you placed to mark the center as a guide, and run a little running stitch down the center to help you fold your shrine. You now have two openings in the top of your shrine. You’ll want to insert a piece of cardstock into each one, to give your shrine some body. (The cardstock can be any old thing - an old greeting card, some junk mail, etc.) 

Just cut the cardstock so that it fits inside the two panels of your shrine. The pieces should be short enough to leave you some room to stitch up the top. If you want to be extra shriney, you could also insert something secret into the inside of your shrine - like a picture, or a handwritten note. That would be really cool.

Okay, so now you can stitch the top closed. And if you like, you can add some ribbon ties or a button-and-loop to hold your shrine closed. 

If you want to make a three-fold shrine, you can start with felt pieces that are a little longer - mine are 6.5″ long by 3.5″ tall. And the process is pretty much the same.

The only crucial thing to remember with a three-panel shrine is that the panel that will fold to the inside of the shrine should be a little narrower than the other two panels. (In other words, all three panels shouldn’t be the same width. If you made it that way, it wouldn’t fold up nicely.)

When you’re looking at the inside part of your shrine, this narrower panel will be the one on the right-hand side.

When you’re looking at the outside part of your shrine, this narrower panel will be the one on the left-hand side.

To read more of Diane’s posts, visit her website “CraftyPod“.

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