Why you Should Craft When Times are Tough

If you haven’t heard the economy is in the drink. It seems every time I turn around there is more news of another bank or company on the brink, with no foreseeable end in sight.

We’ve heard the comparisons that this recession looks very much like the great depression. It is hitting everyone’s pocket book, no matter your socioeconomic status. This free fall to the bottom isn’t discriminating.

So why should you craft when there is even less disposable income for you to play with? Well here are my top reasons you should craft when times are tough:

Make new clothes or fix up your old:

With a little sewing know how you can make pants into quilts, pants into bags, or upcycle any old thing into something new to you.

You can even stretch your current wardrobe a bit longer with some simple mending techniques. Fix a small tear, reattach a button and extend the life of your bra. Craftzine is also featuring great tutorials on how to mend your clothes. You can catch up on their series over on their blog.

Craft as Entertainment:

Since we’re all tightening our belts, metaphorically speaking, cash to go out and have a good time isn’t really in the cards. So what do you do to while away the hours?

Craft!

Let your imagination run wild and find your creative side. It’s good fun to sit down for a couple of hours and get your hands dirty with paint and dyes.

Take a good hard look at the supplies around your house and before you know it, your use what you have mentality will be kicking in and you’ll be off creating some amazing projects.

When crafting, we fall back on our ingenuity and know how. We start to think outside of the box and come up with creative solutions to simple and complex problems. I’m a firm believer that this will help us survive these lean times.

De-stress

Crafting can help us de-stress. By picking up some knitting or starting a scrapbook, it helps to take your mind off of the more pressing issues of the day. Just a couple hours of creativity can really help refresh you and can help prepare you for the next day’s troubles and tasks.

How else can crafting help us through? Share your ideas in the comments!

[Image by Bascom Hogue, under creative commons license]

5 thoughts on “Why you Should Craft When Times are Tough”

  1. For refashioning tips, you should check out http://nikkishell.typepad.com/wardroberefashion/. You can browse through thousands of clever, beautiful and overall thrifty ideas for recycling clothing or take a pledge to not buy any new clothing. I’m doing 6 months and not only is it saving me money, it’s fun and there is a sense of achievement too (especially when you get nice comments!)

  2. Lenore MacLeod-Bickley

    I completely agree!! 🙂 Crafting is a great way to keep our spirits up, and we need it more now than ever. On top of that, you bring up great points about crafting to re-purpose clothes or fabrics to get more use out of them, which definitely saves money.

  3. Crafting might in some cases be a free/cheap activity or way to get “new” things that are on your wish list! I was able to get a new/decorated bathroom by wallpapering the walls with pages from old books I was going to donate to a thrift store.Crafting is a good way to turn what you have into what you need.

  4. Crafting is an inexpensive way to feel productive. Visit ScrapbookPantry.com for a large selection of recycled Scrapbook papers.

  5. Another benefit of crafting during stressful times is that by nurturing our imagination, we are actually nurturing the creator within ourselves,in essence, our spiritual core. What better rememdy is there than that? Thanks for the sharing!

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