How to Paint with Crayons
How would you like to paint with crayons?
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Artsy Things
You can paint with Easter egg dye!
Did you know that you can paint with Easter egg dye? The result is similar to watercolor painting, and it’s a great way to use up leftover dye after you’re done with your eggs.
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We Made Pysanky Eggs–and So Can YOU!!!
Pysanky is like Egg Dyeing: Master Level, except that it’s actually quite accessible–my eight-year-old did it, and my ten-year-old, and my husband, and fumble-fingered ME!
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Brian Dettmer Uses Old Books in Stunning New Ways
Artist Brian Dettmer is using old books to create beautiful art. Check out his TED Talk about what he does and why he does it.
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Cleaning Paint Brushes without Harsh Chemicals
Instead of tossing your old, frayed brushes, try this simple technique for cleaning paint brushes without harsh chemicals solvents.
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Book Page Prints into Greeting Cards from Spooky and Bright
How to make your own greeting cards that aren’t super cutesy and twee?
Include something vintage!
I made these DIY greeting cards not with rubber stamps of teddy bears or foam stickers of ducks in bonnets, but with vintage book pages. Pages trimmed from a ratty, torn copy of The Turn of the Screw and an old dictionary, embellished with paint, compose the front images of a set of all-purpose blank cards, suitable for either the kids or the adults in the family to use.
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How-to: Painted Stones
Stones are completely beautiful in themselves, but sometimes you just feel in your heart that you need something with a little more color.
And that’s okay! Maybe sometimes a plain old grey stone WANTS to be painted, you know?
Handmade Memory Games Crafted from Sustainable Supplies
Kids love to play Memory! Here are a ton of handmade memory games that you can craft using sustainable supplies.
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Use Faber-Castell Pitt Pens to Draw on Wood, Rocks, and Shells
Do I really need to tell you WHY I want to draw on rocks? Or wood? Or seashells? Just think up a reason that makes sense, and pretend that’s why.
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How-to: Kid-Made Puzzle Piece Valentine
Your kiddos can create one handmade Valentine from just two perfectly fitting jigsaw pieces. Give them most of a box, and they can make all the Valentines for their class party. It’s a fun upcycling project that won’t cost you a cent.
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How-to: DIY Space Art for Our Nursery
It’s super simple – and fun! – to create custom DIY art using old book pages! Here’s how I made this space art for our baby’s nursery.
DIY Sailors Valentine: A Beach Vacation Souvenir
A sailors valentine is a traditional form of shell craft, and they’re not just for mid-February!
They were most popular back in the 1800s, when they made a pretty darn good souvenir for sailors to bring back to their loved ones from those exotic islands that they voyaged to. Today, they’re mostly the provenance of nautical-themed museums and certain fine artisans…and me!
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Project Show-and-Tell: Vegan Sugar Skulls for el Dia de los Muertos
It turns out that vegan sugar skulls are even easier to make than the conventional kind, since you can use the cornstarch from your cupboard instead of searching for that hard-to-find meringue powder.
Exactly HOW easy are they? If I can make these perfect sugar skulls for my kiddos to decorate on my very first attempt, then so can you!
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Drill It with a Dremel: How to Drill through Just about Any Natural or Recycled Material Using a High-Speed Rotary Tool
With the right bit, you can use a Dremel to drill through just about any material, natural or recycled, that you can think of. From bottle caps to rocks, here are my tips on the best bits and the proper technique to make your work perfect and keep your fingers safe.
How-to: DIY Liquid Watercolors from Upcycled Dried-Out Markers
Liquid watercolors are a versatile art supply that kids, especially, love to create with. If you’ve got a stash of dried-out markers lying around, you can make your own liquid watercolors for free, in the process breaking down those plastic markers for recycling and upcycling one of their most wasteful components.
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5 Clever Ways to Reuse Markers and Pens
Below are five ways to reuse markers and pens instead of tossing them.
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How-to: Let Your Kids Turn Their Unfinished Wooden Toys into Painted and Sealed Wooden Toys
Toys are fun for any kid, but half the fun of unfinished wooden toys is, I discovered, letting my kiddos paint and finish them all by themselves.
Reader Question Answered: Reusing Cardboard for Kid-Friendly Crafts
Cardboard is a terrific material to reuse for kids’ crafts because it’s so sturdy, and it’s amenable to a wide variety of media, from duct tape to spray paint.
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How To Antique Paper Using Coffee Staining
Coffee staining is an easy way to give an antique look to paper. Here’s how to antique paper with a simple coffee staining technique.
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Summer Craft: Soap Carving for Kids
A bar of soap is easy to carve even with simple, blunt, household tools, which makes it an extremely satisfying activity for a kid, who probably doesn’t get a lot of chances to carve something these days. If you make or buy organic, natural-ingredients soap, soap carving is also a wholesome activity, and it won’t add anything to the waste stream.
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How-to: Recycle Crayola Markers
You CAN recycle most of a Crayola marker. It’s messy work, and it’s time-consuming, but it’s also a great lesson for kids (and for us!) about the obligations of responsible consumerism.
7 Art Supplies Made Directly from Nature
You don’t have to be satisfied with art supplies that are simply “non-toxic.” Art supplies that come directly from nature, with minimal processing, are healthier, more environmentally friendly, and can still be of excellent quality, often allowing you to create effects that it’s difficult to obtain with their artificial counterparts.
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How-to: Make a Rainwater Watercolor Painting
Natural materials make fabulous art supplies. Even when it’s raining outside, you can make good use of the weather by creating a watercolor painting project in which the rain is the most important ingredient.
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Giveaway: Win an Earth Paints for Children Organic, Eco-Friendly Paint Set
If you know any kiddos who enjoy painting, and you’d like to provide them with some special materials–say, an organic, eco-friendly, earth- and mineral-based paint set–then you’re in luck!
Read on to enter a giveaway for one set of Earth Paints for Children.
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Review: Earth Paint Eco-Friendly Paint for Children (and a Giveaway!)
My kiddos do a LOT of painting, with all different kinds of paints. They’ve done tempera and acrylics, oils and watercolors–heck, they even spray paint!–but I can say for a fact that they have never before used completely natural, completely toxin-free, completely artificial chemical-free paint (other than mud, of course) until they painted with Earth Paint.
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Project Show-and-Tell: An Upcycled Smash Book for My Anniversary
Smash books are quicker, easier, and more creatively amenable to recycled components than traditional scrapbooks can be, and frankly I much prefer the look of a smash book to that of your typical carefully engineered scrapbook. If you’d like some more examples, then please feel free to take a look below at my own upcycled smash book–it’s by no means perfect, but the beauty of a smash book is that it isn’t meant to be perfect. Instead, it’s meant to be meaningful, fun, crafted with lots of upcycled materials and stash components, and beloved by its recipient.
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Giveaway: Win a Copy of The Christmas Guide to Upcycling, by Mahe Zehra Husain
Twenty-five people will win a copy of Mahe Zehra Husain’s ebook, The Christmas Guide to Upcycling. Enter now, and one of those winners could be you!
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Green Crafter Book Review: Crafty Cans and Perplexing Plastic, by Mahe Zehra Husain
If you’re a recycled artist or crafter, you may think that you know everything that can be done with old soda cans and plastic packaging, but trust me–Mahe Zehra Husain has some very new things to teach you (and something to give you, as well–read on for the details!).
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Five Upcycled Crayon Crafts
Ah, crayons…such versatile, waxy, brightly pigmented goodness! My little girls have a couple of nice boxes of unbroken, new-ish crayons reserved for schoolwork and special art projects, and a giant bin of broken, half-wrapped, stubby, old crayons, gathered here and there and everywhere, that we use for everything else.
Old crayons may seem like a nuisance to have underfoot, but they are incredible art supplies, and you can make some surprisingly sophisticated creations with them. Here are five projects, from canvas art to kid crafts, to get you started
How-to: Burlap Chevron Paintings
This project was a lot of fun to do, and it combines two things that I love: mod design and burlap!
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Review: Stockmar Beeswax Crayons
High-quality natural art supplies can be awfully pricey, especially when the artist that you’re supplying still drinks from a sippy cup. Are these fancy natural materials really worth the hype?
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Five Eco-Friendly Hoop Art Ideas
Hoop wall art is very easy to curate even without knowing how to embroider or sew. Here are five ways you can adorn your wall with vintage hoops.
How-to: Make a Waldorf Window Star
Make a kid-friendly, plastic-free suncatcher using kite paper, stick it onto any sunny window, and watch it glow.
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How-to: Stencil on Vinyl Record Albums to Create a Custom Upcycled Sign
If you have old vinyl record albums that no longer play, upcycle them into a stenciled sign to decorate your music room.
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A High-Quality Crayon Sharpener will Change the Way that Your Kids Color
If your kids prefer using markers (so much plastic!) to crayons, perhaps all they need is a really nice crayon sharpener to make it fun again.
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