Think Crafts Blog – Craft Ideas and Projects – CreateForLess

By Crafts-a lot Contributor, Mable who is an avid reader of craft blogs & magazines and has aspirations to improve her crafting skills.

I love Birthdays! My birthday was a few weeks ago, and I received the cutest gift bag from my crafty friend Kim. She made a felted cake with candles, and glued to the front of my card. I loved the idea so much I stole it and used it to make a birthday gift bag.

To start, gather these supplies:

Felt

Roving felt

Felting needle

Foam block

Gift Bag

Birthday Scrapbook paper

Hot glue gun

Optional: Birthday stickers, embellishments, die cuts

To create this cupcake felt appliqué, start with a square piece of felt. The first layer of felt will be the cupcake holder. I cut the bottom piece of felt in the shape of a cupcake. Lay the felt on your foam block, and take pieces of a different color roving felt and make long “snakes” by rubbing them in your palms. Attach the roving felt snakes to the bottom felt with your felting needle. To do this, push the needle through the roving felt into the bottom felt. Repeat this around the edges of each stripe on the cupcake holder.

For the cupcake top, I took yellow roving felt and formed a circle. I laid it on the round part of my cupcake bottom felt piece and secured the yellow roving felt with my felting needle. My cupcake was completely shaped with three small circles.

I decorated my cupcake with a flower also made from roving felt. To make the flower I made another “snake” from red roving felt. I attached one end to the cupcake, made a loop, and attached the other end to make each bloom. There were five loops to make my flower.

After my flower was done, it was ready to be glued onto the gift bag. I had decorated the gift bag by gluing 2 different patterned birthday scrapbook sheets down to make the backdrop. Next I just needed to glue down my felt cupcake with the hot glue gun.

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 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

By Sparkle E. Glitter from the blog “Sparkle Studio”.

I am obsessed with pretty spring birds, I admit it!  I had such fun making these today out of Shrinky Dinks, and you will too!  Here is what you need:

• White shrink plastic
• Colored pencils 
• Big & Glitzy Glitter Glue  (I used Aquamarine and Ruby)
• Scissors 
• Hole punch 
• Ribbon 
• Your oven

Try this:

1.  Print bird pattern.  Lay it under shrink plastic.  Trace with pencil.  You should get two birds out of a sheet of plastic.

2.  Color birds with colored pencils.  Put the kids to work, have them color! Cut out the birds.  Use hole punch to punch a hole in the top wing.

3.  Bake in the oven on a cookie sheet following the instructions on the shrink plastic package.  See how much they shrink?

The color intensifies when they shrink.  Pretty!

4.  Squeeze a little glitter glue on the bird.  Spread with a small brush or with your finger.  Let glitter dry.  Even prettier!

Please welcome our newest blog contributor, Anitra from the blog “Coffee Pot People“. Anitra will be our Recycled Arts Contributor.

Anitra’s motto: “Use it up. Wear it out. Make it do, or do without.” Live with that long enough, and you’ll never want to throw anything away, so best to turn it into art!.

Frazzles!

Feeling frazzled? Lots of us are, with the school year underway and all the fall and winter holidays on the horizon. So let’s make a card, and not just any card, either. Let’s make a Frazzled card!

 Here’s what you’ll need:

• Blank card and envelope
• Fabric large enough to fit the card, front and back (fabric samples work well)
• Button
• Rayon or other embroidery floss
• Glue or double sticky tape

The first thing you’re going to do is choose your fabric. If you have one of those fabric sample books flip through it until you find a piece you like. They’re nice, because they have a paper backing around the edge, but any piece of fabric you like is good.

Take your blank card and open it out flat, and lay it face down on the fabric. By “face down” I mean that you should put the side you’ll write on down, and what would normally be the front of the card facing up. That’s because you’re going to trace around all four sides of the card now, and if your pencil slips you don’t want the marks to show on your finished card.

You can see that my fabric is already nearly the size of the card, but that’s because I had a fabric sample that size. Once you’ve marked your fabric, cut it with pinking shears just outside the marks. You want the fabric to be a little larger than the card. If you have enough fabric, cut a strip as long as your card is wide, maybe an inch wide.

Now choose a button that coordinates with your fabric. Flat buttons work best, but buttons with short shanks can be used, too.

Fold the fabric piece you’ve cut in half, so you’re looking at the front of your finished card. Take the button you’ve chosen, and play with positioning it a bit. Maybe it will look best centered on the card, or maybe near one of the corners. Maybe it wants to sit, centered, near the lower edge. Just move it from place to place until you like what you see.

Thread your needle with the embroidery floss, but don’t tie a knot. Rayon thread is crinkly, and will give shine and a lot of texture. Other option are regular floss, or yarn.

This is where the “Frazzled” part comes in. You’re going to sew the button to the fabric, but not from the back like you’d usually do. Push the needle in from the front, and pull the floss through until an inch and a half or two inches is left, sticking out of the button. Bring the needle through the other hole in the button, and cut the thread, again leaving a tail an inch and a half or two inches long. You can leave longer tails if you like; it’s all up to you.

If your button has four holes, do that twice. Pick up the thread tails and tie them in a knot.

You're almost finished!

Glue the fabric to the card. You can use rubber cement if your fabric has that paper backing. Otherwise, double-sticky tape is the way to go, as the rubber cement may show through the fabric. Glue the extra strip of fabric you cut to the flap of the envelope.

My finished card

Frazzles are really very tactile. You’ll find people want to stroke them, and play with the shiny floss ends.

A few favorite frazzles

Recently I spent a day making greeting cards. It’s relaxing and brings a smile to my face. I have more cards than I’ll ever use, but I just can’t stop at one or two. I found a wonderful organization that sends unused greeting cards and stationary to our troops overseas so that they have a way to send news and love to their friends and family back home. CardsForHeroes has sent over 126,731 cards to our troops.

This simple stamped card is perfect to send to an organization like Cards For Heroes.

Find your cardmaking supplies on CreateForLess.com and your buck goes a long way. I’d be lost without my card blanks, which save time and energy. I always love using mirror paper to mat my card front images and embellishments. We can make such a big difference to our troops using our creativity.

So many of our current trendy crafts include some hand writing.  Crafts like scrapbooking, card making, collage, altered art, and even painting.  At the very least you should be adding your signature to your crafts as the finishing touch!

I don’t know about you, but as my god son would say, “My handwriting sucks!” I hated penmanship in school (dating myself with that word!) and most of the time I’m in such a hurry that I can’t even read what I’ve written.  Heck, I’m so lazy that my signature is just my first inital and last name and even then I’m just scribbling always remembering to dot the i! Many use the computer and its heavenly wealth of fonts to make their crafts neater, but the whole point of being creative is to express yourself through your own mind, heart, and hands.

My most treasured keepsake from my mother is a silly old calendar on which she wrote a little something each day. I treasure it because seeing her hand written words makes me feel close to her again.  If she had used a computer, rub on letters, or sticker phrases, I don’t think the calendar would have much meaning to me. 

Maybe I should have been a doctor, my handwriting is horrible!

Here are some handwriting tips I learned while teaching at a scrapbooking expo:

Practice. Practice. Practice! If you don’t write often, you’ll “forget” how.

Make it easier with light marks to keep your handwriting straight and not marching up and down or slanting.  Keep pencil marks light. A heavy line will leave imprints on your page and be more difficult to erase. These imprints can also affect the way the paper takes colored pencils, chalks and watercolors.

A heavy-handed eraser can take the color off white core paper, patterned or solid. Go lightly!

Small, evenly placed characters look clean and precise.

Concentrate.  Don’t be distracted.  Don’t be doing four things at once. You want your lettering to look good, so take the time to do it right.

Whether you use a template or create guidelines yourself, be diligent about it. A little advance planning goes a long way.

It is great to copy and emulate other fonts or people’s writing, but the point here is to get your writing in your books. So find a style that suits you. Are you someone who loves cursive? Do you write in all caps, all lowers, or a mixture of both? Make sure that your style shines through in your letters.

Sometimes the faster you go, the better the results can be.  Just making sure that you’re concentrating. If you’re trying for a carefree look, make your guide lines, pencil in your text for correct spacing, and then go for it!

Use a straight edge for your verticals. If you’re doing large letters for a title, or even for your journaling, use a ruler to make your verticals. This is a trick architects use to make their printing look prefect every time.

Use shadowing for a great effect. It softens the subtle imperfections in your writing, making your letters look better. Grab a Black and Platinum Zig Writer and create letters that jump off your page.

Do not be too critical of yourself. Hand lettering is not, and will never be, perfect. And it shouldn’t be.