Craftster's hand made gift ideas

I know the holiday season is over but there are more times in a year to make gifts than just Christmas.

Over the month of December Craftster.org compiled a list of some great gift tutorials and I'm passing that list on to you.

Tea Wallet

Patchwork Scarf
Photo Bookmark
Felt board
Personalized Coffee Mug
Water Bottle Carrier
Stenciled T-shirts
Fun Clock
Hooded Towel
Watercolor Portraits
Scrabble Tile Magnets
Candle with Wax Globe
Yarn Ball Ornament
Covered Switchplates
Infused Bath Salts
iPod Cozy
Hat from a Sweater
Little Notebooks
Cupcake Kit
Travel Sudoku Tin
Etched Bottle
Embellished Silverware
I Spy Bag
Pendant
NoSew Fingerless Gloves
Personalized Clue Game
Recycled Stationery
Photo Pillow
Lavender Sachet
Decopaged Spatula

Make your own Cleaning wipes

Cleaning wipes are expensive but so convenient! 

Thanks to Organizedhome.com for this tutorial.

You can use any tightly sealable container for this. You probably have everything you need to do this in your home. I know I do.

Original tutorial is HERE

Wipe Out! Make Your Own Cleaning Wipes

Posted March 31, 2009 by Cynthia Townley Ewer

Who doesn't love commercial cleaning wipes? They're wickedly convenient--but also wickedly expensive and often contain harsh chemicals.

The alternative: make your own!

Homemade cleaning wipes are easy to make, economical, and contain only those cleaning agents you select.

Put homemade cleaning wipes to work for you in your organized home with our easy instructions:

Materials and Equipment Needed:

cylindrical plastic food storage container, 10-cup capacity
extra-large roll of paper towels
cleaning agents of your choice (recipes follow)
electric drill with 1/2-inch drill bit
electric knife
liquid measuring cups

Instructions:

In the garage or workshop area, place a small block of wood beneath the plastic food storage container lid. Use electric drill to drill a 1/2-inch diameter hole in the center of the container lid.

For best results, select an extra-large roll of good quality paper towels for this project. Less-expensive towels fray or shred when pulled through the holder; thicker quilted towels have greater cleaning strength and withstand more scrubbing. Even at $1.39 per roll, cost for homemade wipes will be less than 75 cents, not including the storage container.

Without removing the paper towel wrapper, use the electric knife to cut the paper towel roll into two shorter rolls. Save the second roll for a refill later. Be patient! It may take up to two minutes to cut through the towel roll and cardboard tube inside.
Remove the wrapper, and place one short paper towel roll inside plastic food storage container. Using a liquid measuring cup, gently pour one of the following cleaning solution recipes over the top of the paper towel roll.

You will need between 2 and 4 cups of cleaning solution, depending on the size and absorbency of the paper towel product selected. These recipes make about three cups of solution; increase or decrease amounts if needed.

General Surface Cleaning:

1 1/2 cups white vinegar
1 1/2 cups water

Disinfectant Cleaning:

1/4 to 1/2 cup pine cleaning solution such as Pine-Sol brand
2 1/2 to 2 3/4 cup water

Window and Glass Cleaning:

1/2 cup rubbing (isopropyl) alcohol
2 1/2 cups water
1 tablespoon white vinegar

Place the lid on the plastic food storage container, and allow paper towels to absorb cleaning solution for 4 hours to overnight.

Open the food storage container. Gently pull the wet cardboard tube from the center of the paper towel roll and discard. Carefully pull the end of the paper towels from the inside, where the cardboard roll had been. Thread the end of the towels through the hole in the lid, and replace the lid.

Pull gently on the exposed end to separate the cleaning wipe.

Tips:

As you use the wipes, they will begin to dry out, so add more water and/or cleaning solution as necessary. Allow wipes to stand overnight before continuing to use them after adding more solution.

You may vary the strength of the cleaning solutions as necessary for your household, using more cleaning agents for a stronger wipe, less solution and more water for a milder product.

Easter egg tips and tricks

Ditch the packaged egg decorating kits! You probably already have everything you need for great Easter eggs in your house.

Basic colouring

Did you know that you can use regular food colour to dye your eggs? I have been using it since I was a child and gives a very vibrant or light pastel colour, which ever you like, it just depends on how many drops of colouring you put in your water.

Here's how; Combine 1tsp of vinegar with a half cup of hot water and a few drops of food colouring. Many boxes of food colouring comes with a colour chart or you can follow this one that I found with a quick google search. Keep in mind that all brands on the colouring will vary slightly and that using less will give a more subtle colour while using more will create a deeper colour. Food colouring can also dye your plastic containers and wooden items like your table.  Coffee mugs work great for this project because they are deep enough to submerge the whole egg and are made out of a ceramic which is not likely to stain. As with all craft projects with kids you might not want to do this while your kids are dressed in their Sunday best as it may stain clothes. The chances of staining will depend on the brand of food colouring you choose though I find it's pretty safe. For best results, let the water cool before you start dipping the eggs.

To dry the eggs

I hope you have been saving toilet paper rolls or paper towel rolls. Take a few of these and cut them into half inch disks. These disks are perfect for placing the wet dyed eggs on instead of back into the egg cartons to keep the colour from smearing and to display them right away. 

A little more fun?

Sneak into the kids crayon collection and collect the white crayons. If you find your kids don't actually use white crayons you can keep them with the rest of your adult crafting stuff too. If you don't have any white crayons yellow ones will also work but I think the white ones are way cooler.

Let the decorator draw or scribble all over the egg with the crayon before dipping in the dye then when it's dipped the dye does not stick to the wax and leaves cool patterns on the eggs. 

Hope you and your family have a traditional Easter, either with new traditions or old!

Make your own Swiffer accesories

I can not take credit for this. This collaboration of links has been put together by Tipnut and am just sharing them with you here.

15 homemade Swiffer cloth patterns includes patterns for knitting, crocheting, sewing and even a no-sew option for the craft challenged (it uses an old sock... brilliant!) 

It also includes a link to a pattern to make your own Swiffer duster and how to take the cap off of a Swiffer wet-jet canister so you can fill it with whatever cleaner you prefer.

The link to the full article in tipnut is HERE.

I personally saw a reusable Swiffer style cloth at Dollarama an just picked one up the other day and then use a spray bottle to get the floor a little damp with a home made cleaner. I'm not as fancy as some people with the whole "Swiffer system" but it works for me.

$5 challenge

Living with Lindsay is having a $5 craft challenge. The button has been there on the right for a little while now. Have you noticed it? Either way, I decided to use the cute box tutorial that I posted in February as my entry, but add to it a little bit to freshen it up.

The directions are the same, but I prettied up 2 boxes that I use several times a day.

 These boxes under my baby's crib hold her clothes and her diapers. Kind of like a make shift drawer they were meant to be a temporary measure until we bought a new dresser for her. They are in such a convenient place and just the right size though they have been there about 6 months now. 

This is them all wrapped up like presents.

 Lowering the safety bar for the crib keeps the troublemaker out of the "drawers".

Check out other crafts that have been entered into this contest at Livingwithlindsay

Fun with plastic bags

Unless you are super smart and remember to bring cloth bags with you to the store you probably have too many plastic bags under your sink or in the pantry just waiting to get thrown out or recycled. Well what if there were uses for these things? Turns out there are many hings you can do with old plastic bags. 

One great thing to do with them, for anyone that sews, is to fuse them together to become one thick plastic sheet that can be sewn like fabric to make anything from purses to rain coats to shoes to new shopping bags to whatever. It becomes hard to tear but you can still cut and sew it.

A really simple bag fusing tutorial with video can be found on etsy.com's how to section and another tutorial with a slight difference at cut out and keep. There is also a tutorial on the threadbanger website on how fuse the plastic and also make a padded laptop case with the newly fused plastic. 

Threadbanger mentions that you should not use pins when sewing the fabric but that you should use bobby pins instead to prevent having too many holes in your 'fabric'

Another great thing is good news for people that like to crochet and knit is to make plastic bag 'yarn'. This is also really simple and again you can make bags or anything you would normally knit or crochet, even dresses. 

HERE is a tutorial where you knot strips together. I personally don't like knots when I am crafting so I use this tutorial found at wiki how.

Just for a larf, before typing this up I used the search option on wiki how and looked up more tutorials for things to do with plastic bags and found a few of interest.

How to make a kite from a plastic bag

How to use a plastic bag as a salad spinner

How to make a plastic bag poncho for your dog

How to weave a plastic bag into a purse

How to make a vase from a plastic bottle

I found this tutorial on wikihow.com 

There is really a lot of information on there. Go to the Wikihow to make a vase from a plastic bottle page to learn more about making this vase but I have posted the basic tutorial here.

 Here is the finished product. Much more elegant than you would have thought for a recycled bottle, eh!

Anyhow, now for the tutorial.

You will need a plastic bottle, like the 500 ml  kind that had pop in it, scissors and some decorative stones.

Steps

1. 

   
   Mark and cut the smooth middle portion of the bottle to give an even edge approx 7.5 to 8cm (3") above where you want the fluted rim to be.
   

   
2. 

   
   

   
   

   
   Measure and make straight, evenly spaced cuts all the way around the bottle. Cut the segments in half and then cut each of those in half to make even, thin strips.
3. 

   
   Carefully press and fold all the strips outward to make a level edge all the way around.
4. 

   
   

   
   Press the bottle upside down on a flat surface to ensure an even edge.
5. 

   
   

   
   Weave the tip of a strip over the next one and under the next two. Fold and crease it so that the tip is at the place shown here by the arrow.
6. 

   
   Fold and crease the next one the same way, but weave this one over two and under one.
7. 

   
   

   
   Fold the third strip and weave the same as the first one.
8. 

   
   

   
   

   
   Continue around in this pattern until the last three and tuck each one under the next until woven in completely.

[edit]Tips

• 

  
   Be sure to maintain the regularity of the creases.
• Because the plastic will be very lightweight, add marbles, beach glass, or decorative stones in the vase to provide a weighted base.
• When you add the marbles and stones and allow the light to shine through your vase, it will produce beautiful, stained glass-like colors.