Why Buy when you can Make Your Own? There are three great reasons for making your own household goods at home:
Category Archives: crafts
8 Homemade Wedding Favor Ideas
Homemade wedding favors not only make your wedding unique, they can save you money and set a lasting memory for both you and your guests. If you’re looking to make your own homemade wedding favors, consider some of these creative ideas.
How to Make Your Own Scented Candles
Although making scented candles is a process, once you make them on your own you will see it is actually pretty simple – as well as fun and cheap.
Friday wrap-up: Getting ready for V-day
Friday Valentine/Super Bowl wrap-up! Including a Wise Bread contest, Valentine’s Day seed bombs and cheap dates, and more.
Blog Wrap-up: Reusable Hand-Warmers DIY
Things are busy around here, and I continue to have some issues with auto-publishing — so here’s a post I meant to have out last week, better late than never! This week, I loved these blog posts – hope you will too!
Friday wrap-up: Winterizing, DIY diffusers, sustainable cooking
Plenty of information on living cheap & green on the World Wide Web this week. Here are a few of the highlights:
Friday: Estate sale spinning wheel edition
This week, I don’t have much of a wrap-up — somehow I escaped the week with few links to show for it. So instead, I’ll just focus on fun and crafts.
Friday Wrap-up: Inservice Edition
Kids are out of school again today! I guess it’s just a warm-up for summer vacation. As always, there are some great articles out there on the Web. Make extra money (or tide yourself over during unemployment)
9 Ways The Easter Bunny Can Bring Less Waste This Year
Just a few shopping days until Easter, the Christian holiday that has become a big commercial event. Americans are anticipated to spend $117 each or $12.7 billion overall on Easter food, gifts and apparel (although fewer people are buying new outfits this year). There are plenty of alternatives to keep the spring holidays fun, festive and frugal. Here are some suggestions ….
Friday super wrap-up! Blizzard edition
This week, the Web has held so many great posts and articles that we are overdue for not just a wrap-up, but a SUPER wrap-up! I hope there’s something here to appeal to everyone.
Remaking a sweater
Yesterday I wrote about storing sweaters. But what if you look at your sweater collection and find a few duds that shouldn’t see the light of next season? Too small, too pilled, too short, too huge, just not right. You would think sweater projects would be perfect in the fall — but in the fall, you’re going to want to USE those projects. Plus, it’s National Craft Month! Get one or two ready now, and they’ll be all set to use this fall. Store sweater projects as you would store the sweaters they’re made from.
My DIY yarn swift – made for $5
March is national craft month — the perfect time to focus on doing crafts … on the cheap. First up: My DIY yarn swift.
An awesome handmade datebook, and a paean to Nikol Lohr
Knitters, spinners and calendar-users, alert! Last week was a week of wonderful surprises. A friend sent a surprise holiday package to my family over the weekend, and then one day I opened my mailbox to find a super-special calendar for 2009.
Cheap, reusable skin exfoliation
After stopping using the stuff, and seeing that my complexion looked a little better (fewer “blemishes,” which after all, I was wondering why I had in the first place since I am in the latter half of my 30s), I took skin care one step further and quit washing my face in the evenings.
My skin’s condition again improved, but I could feel a bit of … how do you say … thickness? Buildup? My skin wasn’t coming off like it used to, and I felt that my complexion, consequently, lacked a bit of freshness.
Enter my newfound, old-school, cheap and utterly reusable exfoliation tool …
Cherry liqueur update
Making reusable gift bags
I kicked off Christmas Eve day by whipping up some gift bags from the materials I bought at Goodwill last week. In 1 hour and 15 minutes, I made 10 bags — here’s how I did it.
Free ways to get in the holiday spirit
Re-use jeans, lazy green – Friday wrap
Great ways to re-use jeans Tipnut this week posted links to things to do with old jeans, and the timing couldn’t be better. The other day, I was going through my fabric bin, looking for material to make a Colonial dress for Little Cheap, and she said, Are those old JEANS? Why do you have pants in your sewing bin?
Re-using household items
In the process of trying to reduce our garbage, I’ve come across several items that I needed and wanted to not buy — and conversely, several items I hated to throw away but couldn’t easily recycle. By reusing these items, necessity meets utility. Quite some time ago, when I started cleaning everything with baking soda instead of scouring powder, I wanted a convenient container – like the one scouring powder comes in. I found an old plastic peanut butter jar in my laundry room, used a nail to punch a bunch of holes in the lid, and voila – my baking soda shaker makes cleaning the bathroom a tiny bit easier.
Friday wrap-up: Whole planet picnic, garden potty, and a solar theramin in a tin
GreenPa wants to start a tradition of a “whole planet picnic” – a waste-free free-for-all on the solstice. That would be today … or more loosely, this weekend. So if you don’t have plans, get those phones ringing! I wish I were on top of this this year … maybe next year. Don’t forget, Saturday is the “golden showers garden party.” I notice that my post on this subject has a big “no comment” from y’all, but even if you choose to participate silently, think about it – and if you do it regularly, let us know if you have any amazing results.