15 DIY Journals, Sketch Pads, and Other Upcycled Books
These upcycled books are super handy, because you can make them in whatever size, style, and thickness you prefer.
These upcycled books are super handy, because you can make them in whatever size, style, and thickness you prefer.
I modified my go-to DIY journal with a cover made from upcycled cardboard, and filled it with coloring pages downloaded from the interwebs. It’s exactly what I wanted, and here’s how you can make one, too!
. I love turning these old photos that I never look at into all-new decorations and utilitarian items, giving them new lives and incorporating those happy memories into even more parts of my home.
Here are three easy methods for upcycling print photos (and book pages, wrapping paper… just about any paper works for this!) into stickers, along with the pros and cons of each method.
You’ve picked out an old book and prepped its pages–what’s the next step in creating an altered book that you’ll love?
Let your imagination be your guide!
Altering a book to use as a journal requires more than just scoring the perfect ancient tome. After you do a price check to make sure you’re upcycling trash, not destroying a national treasure, you have to physically prepare the book to receive your art, writing, and ephemera.
Below, you’ll find lots of macrame tutorials, ranging from beginner-friendly to ones that require more fine-motor finesse.
This DIY yarn tassel is the perfect outdoor craft when it’s beautiful outside, and also a pretty terrific indoor craft when outside sucks.
Homemade Christmas tree ornaments are my favorite holiday decoration. Every year, my kids and I add more handmade ornaments to our collection and I cull a couple more store-bought ornaments. My ultimate goal is to have a Christmas tree so bedazzled that you can barely see its branches, with nary a store-bought ornament in sight.
It can be tricky to think of ways to paint or dye silk fabric, if you’ve mostly worked with cotton, linen, or other plant-fiber fabrics before. You probably already know that silk takes dye differently, but how differently? Can you paint it? Transfer images to it? Dye it multiple colors?
The materials and techniques that you use to dye cotton are necessarily different than what you use to dye silk.
I love how depending on the technique and level of detail, a DIY greeting card can be quick and easy or methodical and precise, and look super awesome either way. I love how easy it is to incorporate upcycled or natural materials or found objects.
A scratch-off card is a really fun way to present all kinds of experience gifts or fun activities. Everybody loves a scratch-off, and it adds an element of surprise that makes an already great gift even better.
Want a fun summertime project that highlights your creative expression, gives a second life to clothes otherwise destined for the waste stream, AND subverts Big Fashion?
You are going to love tie-dye!
Resin crafts, unfortunately, are terrible for the planet.
Instead of tossing it into the waste stream and feeling bad about yourself because of it, give that broken dish a second life by upcycling it into something fun, beautiful, and useful.
If you’ve got some ribbon scraps in your stash (bonus points if they’re silk), then you, too, can try out kanzashi-style ornaments!
You can make anything you can think of out of felt (and some days, I feel like I already have!), but some of the most surprisingly fun–and surprisingly lovely!–things that you can make are felt flowers.
It’s easy to have beautiful music outside your house on any windy day.
One of my favorite parts of windy weather is enjoying the sound of the wind chimes singing from my front porch and back deck.
You likely have everything that you need to dry flowers already in your house.
Whether you have a store-bought, antique handcrafted, or DIY recycled weaving loom, it’s time to make something wonderful on it!
Keep your front door in tune with the season by DIYing a beautiful, eco-friendly spring wreath!
I’m going to show you how to make string art the completely DIY way–from scratch, by hand. It’s going to be awesome.
Check out this list of my own favorite eco-friendly Halloween crafts, and get inspired!
Don’t let outgrown building blocks languish unloved in a back closet, not when there are so many beautiful ways to upcycle them!
It’s October. You need a sugar skull candle holder.
Whichever kind of felt you prefer, you can settle happily into any of the felt crafts below, knowing that whatever you make, it will be a great choice for the environment
So if you, too, buy skull-shaped vodka bottles mostly so that you, too, can do something cool with them after you’ve drunk the vodka, then check out my list of my favorite ways to upcycle that Chrystal Head Vodka skull bottle!
Asymmetry. Bold, unusual color choices. Gradients. Popular novelty trends. Remixing the classics.
The fact is that you could be getting a lot more use out of that hot glue gun.
The best part of reusing empty wine bottles is that you won’t have that big bin of them sitting out on your curb for all of your neighbors to look at on Recycling Day.
A painted rock. Because of course.
Is there a more ubiquitous recyclable than the glass bottle?