How-to: Papier Mache Easter Eggs
Ditch plastic Easter eggs entirely! These papier mache Easter eggs are just as fun to hide and find, and they have just as much room for treats inside.
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The Eco-Friendly Easter Basket: Tips for a Sustainable Easter Morning
It’s so easy to have a junky Easter. Everything in the big-box stores is cheap, everything is made in China, and EVERYTHING is plastic.
Want to do better?
Whether you want to incorporate just a few eco-friendly ideas or go whole-hog sustainable, check out the following plans to green every part of your Easter basket.
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Cardboard Constructions for Kids: Bigger Projects to Make Using More Upcycled Cardboard
Thrill a kid in your life by building them something huge out of cardboard. All you need is a collection of cardboard boxes and a lot of imagination!
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Announcing the Winner of the Full Circle Crafts Giveaway
Did YOU win a recycled snap book? Read on and let’s see!
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Giveaway! Win One of Two Sets of Eco-Friendly Craft Supplies from Full Circle Crafts
Full Circle Crafts is giving away a set of eco-friendly craft supplies to TWO lucky winners!
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How-to: Make a DIY Restaurant Review Log Using the Eco-Friendly Materials from Full Circle Crafts (and a Giveaway!)
I’ll show you how we made our restaurant book using the eco-friendly supplies given to us by Full Circle Crafts, and–best yet–tell you how you can enter a giveaway to win even more Full Circle Crafts supplies.
How-to: Sew a Postage Stamp Quilt from Small Fabric Scraps
Would you like to sew a quilt using only your fabric scraps that are so small that any normal crafter would toss them in the trash?
You bet you would!
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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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How to Sew a Circle Skirt from a Kid’s Bed Sheet (or other Directional Fabric)
Directional fabrics, including children’s novelty sheets, require a slightly different, and only a little more complicated, method to sew a circle skirt with nothing upside-down.
Here’s how to make your kid a circle skirt where Charlie Brown ALWAYS faces the right way.
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A Child’s Formal Dress Sewn from an Upcycled Silk Sheet
Need something sustainably fashionable for that next big event, formal occasion, or fashion show fundraiser? Here’s how I sewed a formal dress for my daughter to model in our town’s Trashion/Refashion Show–from bloomers to bodice, it was created entirely from one silk sheet.
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How-to: A Hoop Skirt Made from Wire Hangers
Using nothing but wire hangers, hot glue, and duct tape, I created a hoop skirt. Here’s how:
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Buy Handmade Makeup from Independent Crafters
Like everything else handmade, handmade makeup is the way to go when you want something just a little different from what everybody else has.
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: Remake Scrapbooking Chipboard
Scrapbooking chipboard is really easy to repaint and embellish. Here’s how I did it.
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Review: The Pick Punch for Making DIY Guitar Picks
Play the guitar? Use a guitar pick? Ever wanted to make your own?
You can!
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How-to: DIY Body Glitter from Healthy Ingredients
Need some sparkle? DIY body glitter takes just seconds to make, is perfectly customizable, and works even better than expensive, store-bought body glitter with freaky ingredients.
And, by using the secret ingredient that you probably already have in your cupboard as the base agent, your body glitter not only won’t be freaky, but will actually be healthy for your skin.
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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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Crafts to Make with Puzzle Pieces
Have a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces? You totally do!
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How-to: Refurbish Thrifted Dishes with Ceramics Markers
I need all my stuff to be crazy awesome (or just crazy!), so I like to pretty up my thrifted dishes using the most simple, most brilliant craft supply that you’ve ever heard of: ceramics markers.
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How-to: Start Seedlings in Food Scrap Containers
Seed starters made from food scraps are even more economical than recycled seedling pots–you’ve got to eat even more than you’ve got to read the newspaper!–and even better for your garden, because all those eggshell seedling pots, orange peel seedling pots, and pumpkin shell seedling pots? That’s compost, right where your garden needs it the most.
Here’s a selection of food scrap seed starters–no matter where your tastes lie, you’ll find something here to eat and then plant.
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How to Refresh Black Clothing with Fabric Dye
Black clothing is the hardest clothing to maintain, because it’s so vulnerable to fading. Even red clothes fade more gracefully than black! Here’s how to use black fabric dye to refresh your faded black clothing.
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How-to: Mend Ripped Jeans
Here’s the easy way to mend tears in your jeans.
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How-to: Kid-Made Recycled Cardboard Pendants
Kids love to make their own jewelry, and these pendants, crafted from upcycled cardboard, are especially fun to create and wear. The pendants cost no money, slip easily inside a letter to a pen pal, and, if the kid gets tired of wearing them, can be tossed right back into the recycling bin.
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How-to: Make Beeswax Cut-outs to Decorate Candles (or Your House)
Beeswax cut-outs take seconds to make, and can be used to decorate candles (even boring store-bought ones!), make candles of their own, or just hang out in your house and look pretty.
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How-to: Ice Building Blocks for Outdoor Play
Colorful building blocks made out of ice are an inviting toy any time of year, but they take on added interest in the winter. They’re easy to make out of a variety of stash and upcycled containers, and everyone will enjoy using them to build outdoor structures that, if it’s below freezing outside, will actually stick around long enough to be played with over and over again.
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How-to: Homemade Solid Body Lotion for Natural Skin Care
Solid lotion contains all the ingredients that are really good for you, like coconut oil and shea butter, but none of the artificial ingredients that make it squeezable through a plastic bottle. A solid lotion bar just sits on your dresser looking pretty until you need it, and then melts with your body heat into your skin right where you want it.
Store-bought solid lotion bars can be REALLY expensive, but DIY solid lotion is an easy homemade project–all you have to do is melt, stir, and pour!
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Decorative Dipped Pinecones: Three Methods
Want to snazz up your pine cones, AND keep them forever?
Here are three different easy methods for making your own dipped pine cones – they’re gorgeous, they may even match your wall colors, and you can keep them just about indefinitely. Even better? Pine cones are free! Just head out to your back yard or to the park with the kids and a basket and collect those natural craft supplies to your hearts’ content!
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Yes, I DID Wrap All of My Christmas Presents in Newspaper and Brown Paper Bags
Store-bought wrapping paper offends me for a lot of reasons–the wasted money, the wasted resources, the energy misspent on buying ephemeral window dressing instead of focusing on family time.
And yet brown paper bags and sheets of newspaper, the go-to gift wrap for the thrifty and eco-minded, aren’t so much…well…cute.
To solve the cuteness dilemma, I spent a lot of effort decorating my first several packages with various upcycled materials and stash components. And then…
…I did something different.
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How-to: Recycled CD Wish List Ornament
Worried that in twenty years you’ll have trouble remembering what it was that your little kid wanted more than anything else for Christmas this year?
Record their wish lists for posterity with an ornament!
How-to: Cinnamon Dough Ornaments that Smell Delicious and Last Forever
Cinnamon dough is as easy to make (and as fun play with!) as play dough, and the ornaments that you can make with cinnamon dough are both sturdy and sweet-smelling.
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Review: DIY Ice Cream with the Play and Freeze Ice Cream Maker
My kids LOVE to make ice cream in their Play and Freeze Ice Cream Maker. But is it worth the fuss?
Depends.
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How-to: Build Newspaper Structures with Your Kids–It’s a Toy that You Can Recycle!
Here’s how to turn yesterday’s newspaper into a temporary toy that your kids will love using to increase their spatial reasoning abilities.
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Review: Rolled Beeswax Honeycomb Sheets from Knorr Beeswax
If you’re fond of making rolled beeswax candles (it’s an easy, fun, kid-friendly craft, and beeswax candles are much healthier than store-bought, petroleum-based candles), then you’ve had to answer the following question:
Where on earth do you BUY those honeycomb beeswax sheets?!?
Honeycomb beeswax sheets are rarely found at local, indie crafts stores (although you can request that they be stocked), rarely found at big-box crafts stores, rarely found at the honey farm booth at your neighborhood farmer’s marker.
I buy my honeycomb beeswax sheets online from Knorr Beeswax, and here’s what I think of them.
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How-to: Repair a Roller Shade with Fabric
A roller shade is easy to repair. Replacing the torn section with fabric won’t hinder the shade’s performance, and considering how roller shades are about the cheapest and most crappy-looking window covering available, anyway, the repair will actually vastly improve the overall look of the entire window treatment.
Here’s how to repair a torn roller shade with fabric that you already own, making it look even better than it did when you first bought it.
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7 Eco-Friendly Indoor Planters
Eco-friendly containers, made either from natural or recycled materials, make great indoor planters. They’re cheap, they’re customizable for whatever spot you want to put them in, and in May, when I’m raring to get back into my outdoor gardens, they can go right back into the recycling or compost bins.
Read on for ideas to create your own eco-friendly indoor planters.
7 Holiday Decorations from Upcycled Sweaters
Wool sweaters, cotton sweaters, and even acrylic sweaters–there’s a place for all of these in a crafty Christmas!