DIY Pot Handle Covers from Wise Craft

Pot holders are all well and good, but sometimes you just don’t need one more thing sitting on your counter while you’re trying to cook.

After one scorched pot holder too many, I was stoked to see the DIY Pot Handle Covers from Wise Craft, written by Blair Stocker. It seriously took maybe half an hour for me to make enough pot handle covers to protect the handles of all my nice cast iron and stainless steel pots and pans, and I couldn’t be happier with the results.

Wise Craft focuses on projects that turn thrifted items, scraps leftover from other crafting endeavors, and natural and found objects into all-new treasures. Along with these pot handle covers, Stocker includes tutorials that use up old books and sheet music (Hot Plate Novels, May Day Cones, and Art Book Wall, to name a few), unwanted leather jackets, ugly paintings, and even uglier Barbie dolls, as just some examples.

Projects like the Zombie Barbies and Updated Oil Painting are especially compelling, since they use the thrifted items not just as crafting material, but as the base for an art piece. Strategies like this are crucial for keeping that less-compelling trash (who *really* wants to play with a nasty old Barbie, anyway?) out of the waste stream.

Fortunately, all of Stocker’s tutorial seem to be as clearly laid out and as easy to follow as the tutorial for these pot holders. It was simple to modify the instructions to use the supplies that I happened to have on hand–this is exactly what you want in a book that aims for you to use thrifted and stash items–and my pot handle covers turned out just as attractive, and just as useful, as the pot handle covers in the book.

In fact, the only thing about Wise Craft that truly troubles me is how I’m going to talk my daughter into making just *one* of her Barbies into a zombie for me to play with.