Think Crafts Blog – Craft Ideas and Projects – CreateForLess

By Craft Trends Contributor, Gillian from the blog Dried Figs and Wooden Spools. Check out our Craft Trends board on Pinterest!

If you are a crafter, then you’ve got glitter. It can’t be helped. It’s a badge of honor, really, to have glitter in every crack and crevice of your craft space and stuck to your hands and shirt and under your nails. It’s glitter. That’s what it does and really, would we have it any other way? A little glitter makes anything more fun, more exciting and more memorable.

ThinkCrafts.com (click image for tutorial)

One Charming Party (click image for source)

If there’s ever a time to use glitter with abandon, it’s on special holidays like birthdays or New Years. These two projects offer different methods for marking those glitter-worthy days with sparkly candles. Both are fantastic projects, both are simple and so, both are must-do’s for any crafter. Candles are always fun, but candles with glitter are much, much better.

Crap I’ve Made (click image for source)

This is possibly the best glitter project I’ve seen. As a long time glasses wearer and a lover of glitter, well, it’s really the perfect project. How can you resist? I don’t think I’d start out using my good prescription glasses for this project, but sunglasses or drug store reading glasses would make excellent candidates for this project, and just think! With so many glitter color options available, you could make a whole wardrobe of glitter glasses!

iCandy Homemade (click image for source)

My little girl is (of course) just as glitter obsessed as I am, so glitter covered clothing is always a hit with her. We’ve done several variations on the glitter tee and each and every one has been worn and worn and worn until there are too many holes to keep wearing it. This tutorial is especially good if you’re looking for one to try (and I highly recommend that you do, especially if you have a sparkle loving child!)

Check out these and other glitter crafts on our Craft Trends Pinboard and please, share your glitter crafts with us! We love to see your projects!

By Craft Trends Contributor, Gillian from the blog Dried Figs and Wooden Spools. Check out our Craft Trends board on Pinterest!

Salt dough is, perhaps, one of the most basic and most usable craft elements. Easy to whip up, you can make it into a whole array of items. Play food, unmeltable snowmen, ornaments, gift tags, you name it, you can make it with a basic salt dough. As a former kindergarten teacher and a mother, I can tell you that I’ve made hundreds of batches of the stuff, and it never fails me. The projects can be simple, rustic, kid friendly or gift worthy, it all depends on what you do with it.

(Modern Parents, Messy Kids: Click Image for Source)

These sweet trees would make excellent gift tags for gifts from your kids to their friends and relatives. Cut out with cookies cutters and them stamped lightly, they could be adjusted for any season of the year simply by changing the shape. And I love the touch of color, just a little bit of marker, that makes the whole thing pop. So cute!

This simple bead captures a moment in time in your child’s life, keeping their little thumbprint safely captured in salt dough forever. Turning it into a necklace for mom would make a great gift that is both easy to make and something to treasure. Love it!

(Alisa Burke: Click Image for Source)

And these! Wow! Just breathtaking, right? These disks are really just stamped, but the trick is to combine very smooth rolling out of the dough and some intricate and well used stamps. And they are truly beautiful. Use them for gift tags, ornaments or hey, just give them as gifts themselves because they are certainly beautiful enough for that!

What have you used salt dough for? Send us your pictures and check out these and other ideas on our Craft Trends Pinboard on Pinterest!

By Craft Trends Contributor, Gillian from the blog Dried Figs and Wooden Spools. Check out our Craft Trends board on Pinterest!

Big letters, single or in small groupings, have long been called in to use by designers and crafters to add a little punch and pizzazz to a space. They bring in color and texture to a space or a project with simplicity. You really can’t beat it and, bonus! They are pretty darn easy to make yourself. Check out these examples of fun, over sized letters that you can add to your home.

(Modern Parents, Messy Kids: click image for source)

This perfectly fun and bright (and really pretty easy) advent calendar shows off a collection of over sized,  mismatched letters, turing a plain mantle into something your kids will jump our of bed for each December morning. I love the red and especially like the casualness of the placement of the letters. Wonderful!

(Design Sponge: click image for source)

I love this DIY light up letter, such a fun idea. And while having it sit there on it’s own is a great use of some twinkle lights and cardboard (and a favorite letter) think how fun it would be to spell out your child’s name, marquis style. Who could resist?

(Design Sponge: Click image for source)

This letter, while simple, completes the art collection on this wall perfectly and would be so easy to make with wooden cut outs and paint. The combination of a double layered letter and the use of a shade close to the wall paint is a great way to add pop without bringing in an additional color.

Have you used over sized letters in a project lately? Send it our way! We love to see what you create! And check out these and other projects for inspiration on our Craft Trends Pinboard!

By Craft Trends Contributor, Gillian from the blog Dried Figs and Wooden Spools. Check out our Craft Trends board on Pinterest!

Capturing your child’s thumbprint, whether in paint, clay or marker, is both a great way to keep a precious moment in their life as well as a great crafting technique. Thumbprints in crafts have long been a fun way to play with mediums for kids (and adults for that matter, the kids can’t have all the fun!) and there are so many possibilities for ways to use them these days.

(Fancy Frugal Life: Click Image for Source)

These thumbprint turkeys are just adorable and such a cute addition to the holiday table. My daughter has been making them for our family and I know I’ll be tucking them away in a few weeks in the keep forever file because I do so love them. I’m sure you will to and what a fun rainy day activity for the whole family!

(Fancy Frugal Life: Click Image for Source)

Here’s another take on the same craft, but instead of plates, use mugs! Just imagine drinking your morning coffee from these cute thankful mugs, what a great way to start your day! I bet the grandparents would love a pair as well (hint hint! The holidays are coming!)

(Alisa Burke: Click Image for Source)

These jellyfish are built around kids finger and thumbprints and wow, are they beautiful. I’m amazed by their elegance, and by the way they combine something simple, like a fingerprint, with the beauty of a great watercolor painting. I love them! I want them! Really, I want one.

And while we’re talking about wanting, I want a gift with a tag like that. I mean, how cute is this little owl? Adorable! And so simple. I mean, you could thumbprint up a couple of dozen tags so you have them standing by through the year! Love love love!

Have you done any thumbprint related crafts lately? Check out the how-to’s on these and others by popping over to your craft trends pinboards!

By Craft Trends Contributor, Gillian from the blog Dried Figs and Wooden Spools. Check out our Craft Trends board on Pinterest!

Remember elementary school winters when you made snowflake after snowflake out of construction paper? I know I could never get enough and I’m sure my parents were, ahem, thrilled, with the endless snowflakes I brought home and taped to all our windows. Well, I still love to make snowflakes in winter, but these days I’m not limiting myself to construction paper.

Beautiful, simple and yet complex at the same time, making snowflakes out of unusual materials like these junk mail versions is a great way to turn a basic craft into something spectacular.

I love the use of these snowflakes strung off of balloons. It adds a whimsical touch with something as simple as a paper punch and some tape. I’d love to see a whole room full of these floating at a winter party. Of course, delicately strung snowflakes like this would look equally beautiful without the balloons, perhaps hanging together along a wall or in a doorway? Either way, they are beautiful.

My favorite snowflakes these days however, and ones I’m dying to try myself thanks to a newfound interest in hand stitching, are these embroidered examples. I’d love to create some simple winter throw pillows embroidered with intricate snowflakes such as these but I’m also thinking they would be a great decoration for winter cards! Umm, I’m ready for winter!

Be sure to check out these and other inspirational ideas on our Craft Trends Pinboard on Pinterest!

By Craft Trends Contributor, Gillian from the blog Dried Figs and Wooden Spools. Check out our Craft Trends board on Pinterest!

Winter is coming! Winter is coming! Ok, I know that for the most part, this is exciting. Winter is probably the best of all seasons for crafters. For one thing, you can craft so many holiday decorations and gifts. And for another, all that cold weather offers up the perfect excuse to stay inside and make things!

BUT

If you have little kiddos than you know that winter can get a little….crazy. OK, downright crazy. First you have the pre-holiday crazy, then you have the actual holiday crazy. And then you have the after holiday there-is-nothing-to-do-and-its-cold-out stir crazy.

But don’t worry, we’re here for you with the best trick in the book. Play dough.

Here’s the thing about play dough. Everyone loves it. Even adults. Even big kids. And making it is SO EASY. There are tons of recipes out there and with so many options you can make a different variety every single day and beat those winter indoor day blues. Here are a few of our favorite recipes:

This is a downright simple recipe that uses jello for both color and scent. It’s fun, it’s fast and you probably have everything you need in your pantry right now. Its a winner.

Oobleck isn’t exactly play dough, but it’s just as fun especially for bigger kids and ESPECIALLY for boys who are missing that certain roll int he dirt kind of play that isn’t always possible in the winter. Oobleck is also a great lesson in the difference between liquids and solids and what happens when something falls somewhere in between the two.

And if you’re feeling a little peckish but you’re also in the mood to roll out and shape dough, well, then, thank goodness there’s a play dough for that! Peanut butter play dough, given in a less healthy and a more healthy version here, is delicious and fun. And can you really beat that? Delicious and fun? No. I don’t think you can.

So bring on the winter doldrums! It’s play dough time!

By Craft Trends Contributor, Gillian from the blog Dried Figs and Wooden Spools. Check out our Craft Trends board on Pinterest!

When I was a little girl, my mother had a crystal bonbon dish on her dresser filled with every color and size of button imaginable. I loved to stare at it, sitting up there with her perfume and her jewelry box. And I loved it even better when she would take it down and let me dump it out and play with all those buttons. Its led to an adult case of button love. And since my kids still play with that same crystal jar full of buttons (although the buttons are, I think, different these days) it’s probably genetic.

I love finding buttons in crafts. Buttons AS crafts. These days buttons come in SO many shapes and colors and styles that there really seems to be a button for every craft. A button for everything. I mean, look at these awesome DIY shrinky dink buttons. SO CUTE. And infinitely customizable.

This shirt with it’s swath of buttons is, frankly, genius. Not only does it turn something boring ( a white tee) into something fun a cool, it’s also a good stain coverup tool. Think of all the shirts you could save with the addition of some button decorations on it!

And clearly, this teeny button on a boutonniere is just, georgours. Perfect touch.

Sometimes, the button itself is the art. Is the craft. Theses button drawings are gorgeous, and wonderful, and whimsical.

Tell us some of your best button crafts so we can add them to the pinboards! And don’t forget to check out our Craft Trends Board for more great button related ideas!