Think Crafts Blog - Craft Ideas and Projects - CreateForLess

I’ve noticed over the last few years that I am seeing the word GREEN more than I usually do in an average day.  Green is my favorite color so I notice any shade of it, even words.  Most people think I like green because it symbolizes money, but I picked out the color green way back in kindergarten so I don’t think money is my inspiration.  No, I like green because it always reminds me of fresh mown grass, mossy hills filled with wildflowers, and walks through gardens and woods.  Green is nature and in nature is my favorite place to be!

But back to my original thought, seeing the word GREEN being tossed about!  This type of green means being kind to our earth.  It means recycle, reuse, reduce, and refuse!  At first I thought it might just be another celebrity cause that would last about as long as a popcycle on a summer day, but I think I’m going to have to put my slightly jaded assumption in the trash!  Living green is becoming part of our daily lifestyle and it’s a wonderful thing.  Especially since green crafting is coming into its own!

Check out these Green Crafting Articles, Blogs, and Websites!

Green Crafting, Can It Make A Difference?

Crafting A Green World

Needlepointers Going Green

Green Options

Going Green With Crafting

Green Crafting Ideas to Do with Your Grandchildren

RecycleCindy On Green Planet Crafting

Green Craft Projects

My green pledge is to be wise in my purchases, recycle materials instead of just tossing them, reuse what I have on hand, refuse to use harmful products, and make a point of complimenting others who are doing their part in keeping our planet safe and beautiful.

Please share your green craft sites with us!  And let us know what you are doing to stay green in your creativity!

Every Family Has A Story…

Although I’ve scrapbooked most of my life, recently I’ve been focusing on family heritage albums and pages.  I found as I was sorting my older photos that I was very curious as to who all these strangers were in my photographs and just how I was related to each one! Genealogy helps us map all our family lines to create family trees.  Family trees make understanding our family connections a little easier. 

A family tree page can make things very straightforward for you.  The page has spaces for writing the names of members of your family tree including the family relationship (grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins). 

You can also use the Family Tree Guidebook, which is an easy to read, easy to understand handbook for helping you create a lush family tree.

I’d also like to recommend the following websites, all of which are filled with great genealogy information, resources, printable forms, and research tips. Cyndi’s List is world famous and very user friendly.  Resources For Family Historians provides endless help in many areas of family research.

My favorite family heritage story is also a little embarrassing.  I wrote a book called, Creating Your Family Heritage Scrapbook: From Ancestors to Grandchildren, Your Complete Resource and Idea Book for Creating a Treasured Heirloom, with an editor I’d been working with for years.  Once the book was published, my cousin Jeff, our family’s serious family historian called and asked me why I didn’t tell him I’d written the book with a relative.  Basically I told my dear cousin Jeff that was the craziest thing I’d ever heard in my life, I’d written the book with an editor who happened to be a friend, not a family member. 

I even called my editor to tell him just how crazy my cousin Jeff was!  Not fifteen minutes later the editor called back to say he’d checked with his aunt (his family historian who happened to be a genealogist) and it was indeed a fact that we were related.  Our great great grandfathers were brothers.  How wild was that!  I humbly called my very sane cousin Jeff to tell him what a brilliant family historian he was!  Families do have the most wonderful stories to tell, we all just need to be quiet and listen.

Do you have a family heritage story to tell?  Have you created a family history or heritage page or scrapbook?  Please share it with us. And if it turns out we are related? I promise not to call you crazy!

I’ll confess that I love jewelry even though I don’t wear a lot of it.  I especially love jewelry that my friends have made just for me!  Jewelry is the craze no matter what the season, but look for big, bold, chunky, and sassy to be the style of jewelry for the rest of 2008.  Think hot pink, fuchsia, turquois, deep blue sea, and in your face green!  Beads are going to be bigger than we’ve seen in a few seasons and with lots of fun crazy shapes.

Clasps aren’t just for keeping a bracelet on your wrist or necklace around your neck.  Top jewelry designers are making clasps part of the overall design of the jewelry piece.  Just like a focal bead, the beautiful clasps are front and center.  While clasps are being shown off, earring findings are getting petite and very simple so that the finding almost disappears allowing a focus on drop gems, stones, beads, and more.

Buttons also seem to be having a revival in jewelry making.  You’ll be seeing all kinds of button jewelry from rings to hair bobbles to anklets.  Old buttons are being mixed with new buttons.  Plain buttons are being mixed with novelty buttons.  It’s a great craft for young and old.  I’ve got a stash of buttons given to me by dozens of people and I store the buttons in old glass jars as part of my studio décor.

Jewelry is always in fashion.  Making your own jewelry pieces allows you to personalize your jewelry to your personality, wardrobe, and mood.  You can string, weave, glue, sew, and so much more in this craft category.  There is something for everyone!

Classic: a trend that has survived over a long period of time; examples are “that little black dress” or the teddy bear

Color: a phenomenon of light or visual perception that enables one to differentiate identical items

Color Value: lightness or darkness of a color.

Consistency: the thinness or thickness of a medium

Contrast: the sharp difference between two colors

Fad: interest followed for a brief time with exaggerated zeal or craze

Hue: the name of a pure color or interchanged with the word color

In: current trend; for example, nostalgia is in

Intensity: color’s purity or strength

Lifestyle: broad view of an individual or society’s beliefs, habits, living, career, and home

Medium: material or surface being used; examples include wood, fabric, paper, clay, or plastic

Motif: another term for theme

Out: no longer a trend or fad;

Primary colors: red, blue, yellow

Secondary colors: mixing of primary colors; green, orange, purple

Shade: a color plus black

Technique: Skill being used; examples include weaving, cropping, photography, rubber stamping

Theme: subject, topic, or motif; examples include nature, family, or friends

Tint: a color plus white

Tone: a color plus gray

Trend: a general direction taken, a current style or preference, vogue; usually builds over a period of time as opposed to a fad.

Trending: trying to predict or examine large-scale popularity of a theme, motif, or item

Yesterday: same as Out