Make-It-Do Home Crafts

Curtain Tieback Ideas
You can make your own curtain tie-backs from almost anything, as long as it fits the theme or style of your decor. Even items you would not normally use make interesting tiebacks, giving them a new purpose and keeping them out of landfills. Match utilitarian items to kitchen, shed or garage windows, while saving dressy or fancy items for the living room or your boudoir.

Making Metal Hooks
You can make your own hooks to hang your favorite decorations or keep small items off your counters. Recycled coat hangers provide the material, you provide the effort.

Steel Picnic Table Design Considerations
Steel-frame picnic tables pair well with the sleek lines of modern-style homes and public buildings. Steel’s strength and durability ensure that the tables can withstand heavy use in public settings. Steel allows you to break away from the straight, utilitarian lines of the traditional rectangular table surface and narrow, attached benches. Its flexibility and malleability allow you to create intricate shapes and textures. Use scrap steel and you create a useful, beautiful and environmentally friendly picnic table.

Three Simple Welded Garden Project Ideas
It is possible to make a decent living making and selling welded garden implements, tools and lawn ornaments. Everything from plant supports to whimsical creatures can be made from round or square steel rod stock, sheet steel, expanded metal or recycled metal parts.

Flower Garden Shortcuts
There is no shame in taking shortcuts to create an eye-catching flower garden. Whether you want a fast-start raised-bed container garden full of trailing petunias, a no-maintenance weed barrier for your tulips and gladiolus or instantly fertile soil for your favorite self-seeding annuals. A flower garden is meant to renew your spirit and relax your mind as you rest from the toil of the day, not strand you in a marathon wrestling match with Mother Nature’s evil stepchildren.

Outdoor Decoration Ideas
While Christmas, Easter and Halloween dominate the holiday decoration market, Mardi Gras, September 11 and Valentine’s Day are additional opportunities to exercise your creativity with outdoor decorations. While many outdoor decorations require hours of assembly and can be crushed or bent during storage, these simple-to-assemble life-size cards can be painted in a few hours and stored flat in minutes.

Beer Bottles to Beads: Junk to Jewelry
Green and brown glass bottles can be made into beautiful glass beads for jewelry, using a few inexpensive items that may already be lying around the house. Glass bead making can keep tons of material out of local landfills.

Make a Heart-Shaped Lap Loom
Weave a heart-shaped doily to give to someone you love, using their favorite colors. Making and using a lap loom helps develop fine motor control, finger dexterity and concentration while teaching children basic principles of geometry, measurement and construction.

Crafts for Kids: Woven Heart Crafts
Weaving crafts help children develop hand-eye coordination and learn to follow directions while developing and practicing fine motor skills. A simple way to introduce kids to weaving is through woven heart crafts. A fun follow-up activity for a classroom lesson on love, the woven hearts can also double as gifts or decorations for Valentine’s Day.

Making Twine and Rag Rugs
"Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without." Housewives from the 1800s through the late 1950s made old fabric, garments, rope and string into other items. Twine rag rugs are an Appalachian and frontier heritage craft. Frugal wives saved bits of string from grocers and variety store owners and even braided flax and hemp into twine over the course of a year or more.

Under the Sea Mobile
Recycle those wooden paddle spoons from ice cream sundaes into an undersea mobile for your garden. Hang them where the breeze can tinkle the bells to create a multi-sensory meditation garden. Make more than one mobile with your choice of undersea creatures to build a scene.

How to Make Lollipop Party Favors
Make these cherubs, snowmen, spiders, cats and ghosts as favors for your next holiday party. Keep a basket of the spooky favors next to your front door for the month of October, and switch to the heavenly and winter favors for the month of December.

Get Froggy with These Centerpiece Ideas
Get your party hopping with an everlasting or edible frog centerpiece. Edible frog centerpieces can contain fruit, vegetables, ice cream, gelatin and cake, among other ingredients. You can even help girls in Africa and around the world escape from poverty and abuse if you choose the right frog centerpiece.

Make a Kwanzaa Swag
Dr. Maulana Karenga created Kwanzaa in an effort to connect the broken threads linking black America to a Pan-African cultural heritage. Part of that heritage was the tradition of handmade crafts and community celebrations. Homemade Kwanzaa swags can be made with any combination of materials that symbolize the food, culture and traditions of the African experience.