cheap craft ideas | ShabbyShe

Archive for the tag “cheap craft ideas”

20 Jul 2015

Teacher Gifts – Upcycled Shirt Cuff Pouches

It’s come around quickly again this year – end of Summer term, which means the end of the school year here in the UK. I like to give my children’s teachers a little token to say Thank You for all their hard work & care over the school year. My children are always bereft to be leaving their favourite teacher!

I made these little tissue pouches from preloved shirt cuffs! My son’s teacher likes purple and my daughter’s teacher is a fan of red – perfect! They were quite quick and easy to put together as I had already made some purple and mauve scrap binding by following this excellent post by Heather at The Sewing Loft and some red bias binding – again, there’s a brilliant tutorial by Deb at Sew So Easy on bias binding.

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The red pouch is the largest of the two: the red checked shirt I used had large cuffs for cufflinks. I made a feature of the button holes by leaving them in place and simply stitching the cuff into a purse shape using the red bias binding tape. I then added the cute little cat buttons which add a feminine (or feline??) touch to the finished pouch. I’m really happy with how this one turned out – it is the perfect size to hold a pack of pocket tissues but can also be used as a little purse or make up pouch.

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The mauve pouch is more of a mini pocket pouch as it was a standard size shirt cuff. I kept the orginal buttons for this pouch as I like the mauve stitching. I think the scrap binding goes perfectly with it! Scrap binding is so fun to make and is a great way to use up little pieces of fabric which are too small for other projects. The fabric in this binding was all pre-cut into quite small squares before they were given to me: I presume they were originally going to be part of a quilt. Anyway they look great as binding and give more colour and texture to a simple project like this teacher gift. As this pouch is smaller I could only include a few tissues and I folded them to fit!

The children made cards and wrote their own special messages in them, then we wrapped the pouches with a little bar of soap (one teacher had already begged the class not to give her chocolate, as she’s on a diet!)

red tissue pouch made from recycled shirt cuff

tissue pouch made from shirt cuff with soap - gifts for teachers

Do you give or make your own teacher gifts? I would love to see a link or photos! x

Posted in Homemade gifts, Upcycled or Repurposed and tagged cheap craft ideas, DIY, diy teacher gift, Easy crafts, gift wrapping, gifts, handmade, homemade, rainy day fun, recycled, Repurposed, scrap fabric buster, Sewing & Fabric, Upcycled

28 Jun 2015

7 Comments

Kids’ craft: Milk bottle boats

This was a fun afternoon in the school holidays – making boats from recycling scraps! This craft is easy for children of any age and a great rainy day boredom-buster – plus when it brightens up you can go and float your boats in a stream!

For this project we used the following (washed!) items from the recycling bin:-

plastic milk cartons
lids from liquid laundry detergent
lolly sticks
fabric scraps (from my huge mountain of scraps, including some old shirts!)

From our craft supplies, we used:-

PVA glue
hot glue (to glue plastic and wood)
pom poms
pipe cleaners
scissors
sellotape
felt tip pens

As you can see, the larger milk cartons (in this case, 4 pints) make an excellent “hull” if you cut them lengthways. A responsible adult really needs to do this part, but as none was available I did it 😉

We had three children for this activity (my two plus a friend) and it was great to see 3 different approaches to decoration. Here, pipe cleaners were attached to the hull to make a mast and flag pole.

My daughter decided hers needed a purple carpet, pink pennant flag and several pompoms!

This upcycled shirt fabric made a great sail, along with some lolly sticks 🙂

I particularly love the ingenuity that went into this craft – the main boat was a plastic detergent bottle cap, extended with pieces of milk carton, lolly sticks, pipe cleaners and a milk lid for the crow’s nest.

Don’t you just love it when kids really get into an idea and make it their own? A great way to spend a rainy day, which we followed up with a sailing contest in the stream!

What ingenious uses do you put your recyclables to? Comment below or tweet me @ShabbySheUK 🙂

Posted in Craft with kids, Upcycled or Repurposed and tagged cheap craft ideas, crafts with kids, DIY, Easy crafts, handmade, homemade, rainy day fun, recycled, Repurposed, scrap fabric buster, toys, Upcycled

27 May 2015

4 Comments

Juice Pouch Party Food Box or Favour Bag

You know when you go to a children’s party and for their tea they each have a party food box? Such a great idea – each child is given their own food, with no bun-fight involved! There is less food wasted and everyone can eat a balanced and sensible amount (within reason!) I hate to see all those cartons thrown away at the end of the meal. It’s obviously easy and convenient to dispose of everything, but what a waste!

Here’s my solution: a mini Capri Sun bag with handle – 100% recycled apart from the thread that holds it together and the ribbon trim.

What I think is nice about my latest juice pouch upcycle is that it can be used and reused – these bags are easy to wipe clean or can be washed up with the dishes and left to air dry. Now, the party food box can easily be emptied, even given a quick wipe, and used as the party favour bag too, for each child to take home his or her goodies at the end of the party.

I’m thinking maybe even treasure hunt bags or Easter egg baskets too? The possibilities are endless…!

I’m popping this little number in my Etsy shop, do take a look at this and my other juice pouch upcycles if you’re into eco-friendly bags. I’m trying to get to a stage where I have one for every occasion 😉 I’m currently working on a zippered lunch box for picnics or long journeys, when the insulated pouches can really come into their own and keep food cool and fresh.

What’s everyone else recycling? Leave me a comment, or if you Tweet join in #makedoandmendhour hosted by Jen on Twitter, Thursdays from 8-9pm UK time – I drop by when I can 🙂

Posted in Storage, Upcycled or Repurposed and tagged bags, cheap craft ideas, DIY, Easy crafts, Etsy, gifts, handmade, homemade, lunchbox, packed lunch ideas, rainy day fun, recycled, Repurposed, Sewing & Fabric, Upcycled

06 Apr 2015

7 Comments

Upcycled Lovelies – Tissue pouches and Sunglasses cases

How about a basket of springy cheer in the form of these tissue pouches and sunglasses cases? Both of these makes are fantastic scrap buster projects and also nice beginner sewing projects to use just a small amount of fabric and test your skills (and your sewing machine!)

Tissue pouches and sunglass cases made from scrap fabric

The tissue pouches are made from fabric remnants from previous projects; this supersoft knit fabric pouch is mostly upcycled clothing – made from one of my daughter’s outgrown tops…

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I love the print on this fabric and the little sequins!

These spotty and flowery fabric ones incorporate one of her cotton tops which was so pretty but only worn a handful of times, as it was sleeveless and rather a chilly summer that year!

This is a rather addictive craft as it’s quick and easy and great practice for sewing straight lines on your machine, something I’ve had to work at myself! There are some great tutorials and patterns online but my favourite is this one from Notes from the Patch

The sunglasses cases are made using flex-frames – I spent ages googling to find out the name of these pinch-open pouch closures!!

flex frames - used to make pinch-open pouches

Flex frames – picture courtesy of artfire.com

Again there are stacks of great tutorials online – I used this one from Fabric Yard (where you can also buy sewing supplies) as it’s got great step-by-step pictures and instructions. By the way, this tutorial says to spray baste the wadding to the fabric – I used a light smattering of fabric glue which seemed to do the trick. Always use what you have to hand, I say!

The glasses cases are also good practice for quilting – a technique that’s quite new to me. It was a fun way to try out different styles of quilting on a small area of fabric before trying a bigger project.

Most of the glasses cases pictured here were made with repurposed fabric from clothing – there are pieces from two men’s shirts, a little girl’s dress and a couple of tops in use here, plus some gorgeous stripy turquoise fabric from a sample book.

What are your favourite scrap-buster sewing projects? I’d love to see your ideas too 🙂

Posted in Homemade gifts, Upcycled or Repurposed and tagged cheap craft ideas, DIY, diy teacher gift, Easy crafts, flowers, gifts, handmade, home decor, homemade, rainy day fun, recycled, Repurposed, scrap fabric buster, Sewing & Fabric, Upcycled

01 Apr 2015

10 Comments

Hello April – News Blackout is over!

Is this what Being An Adult feels like? I’ve just upgraded my website to ShabbyShe.com (no more clunky .wordpress. gubbins). I’m feeling very Official now!

The prolonged News Blackout for most of March is at an end, as I was focussing my efforts on producing some items for a new local craft market and my Etsy shop. Now the craft fair is done I can breathe a sigh of relief, and maybe even start making some bits for myself & my family again! I had rather limited sales at the market despite it being well-attended – possibly March / Easter is more a time to browse for pleasure rather than buy. I’m hoping to do more markets and fairs around Christmas and put my efforts for now into online sales and updating my blog (my first love!)

On the Easter theme, I made some cute egg cosies to keep the world’s best breakfast warm on these cold Spring mornings…

The Happy Easter cosies are for my children – they begged me for these and I promised they could have them if they didn’t sell on Saturday 😀

I can’t decide which is my favourite – I like the cute chicks but I’m also really pleased with how this bunting design turned out – these were literally tiny scraps of fabric. This is why it’s so hard to part with even small off-cuts!

I also added my new-style shoulder bag totes to my Etsy shop. I’m really pleased with this design, I think the ribbon trim sets off the colour nicely, don’t you?

Happy Easter everyone, see you soon! x

Posted in Home Decor, Homemade gifts, Upcycled or Repurposed and tagged applique, bags, bunting, cheap craft ideas, DIY, Easter crafts, Easy crafts, embroidery, Etsy, felt craft, gifts, handmade, home decor, homemade, rainy day fun, recycled, Repurposed, scrap fabric buster, Sewing & Fabric, Upcycled

06 Mar 2015

17 Comments

Capri Sun Shopper – Juice pouch upcycle

Meet the latest addition to the Capri Sun Upcycle family…

… the large shopper tote!

This beauty uses 27 recycled juice pouches in its construction and I designed it to carry the heavy shopping in the War on Plastic Bags!

I made the straps from red webbing strap of a thicker, more durable variety than the smaller lunchbag totes and stitched two lengths together before attaching to the inside and outside of the bag for extra strength. The “leather effect” finish on the ends of the straps are actually brown electrical tape, squirrelled from the Shabby garage 😉

I’m really pleased with the result. This one is not going in my Etsy shop (at least for now!) as I am doing my first “proper” craft fair at the end of this month. If you’re in the Camberley area, do pop along to Market Mall in High Cross Church on 28th March and say hello!

Back to making now – next up will be a smaller Capri Sun shoulder bag! See you soon x

Posted in Homemade gifts, Upcycled or Repurposed and tagged bags, cheap craft ideas, DIY, diy teacher gift, Easy crafts, gifts, handmade, homemade, rainy day fun, recycled, Repurposed, Upcycled

16 Feb 2015

19 Comments

Crafts with Kids: Weaving with CD looms

We’ve been up to a bit of crafty recycling fun recently with some old CDs and wool scraps. The inspiration came from this beautiful post on Make it a Wonderful Life – this lady is a teacher and has had her students weaving an amazing wall hanging with this clever green craft!

Woven CD looms displayed on wall hanging

Beautiful hanging display – Courtesy of Makeitawonderfullife.blogspot.co.uk

CD weaving inspiration – from Makeitawonderfullife.blogspot.co.uk

For this easy-peasy craft you will need:-

old CDs or DVDs
wool scraps (you can use fabric but this sounded more complicated)
a plastic lid (from yoghurt, houmous pot etc)
a hole punch

The plastic lid is to make some needles to help the children weave the wool through their loom. I discovered (through my daughter accidentally unthreading it once or twice) that the needle is actually essential – it’s just too fiddly without. You will need to knot the thread onto the needle though, especially for younger children.

We started off by finding some old CDs which were no longer wanted. My kids were very quick to find some song collections we’d had free with something or other and a Peppa Pig DVD. (Please don’t pelt me with eggs, parents of younger children – my two are suddenly Too Grown Up for Peppa! It will come to them all…!)

Unwanted DVD and CDs, ripe for recycling

Don’t you just ❤ my tablecloth??

Next we made some plastic needles…

This is fun! I cut a sort of narrow fish-shape from the lid of a large pot and used a holepunch to create an ‘eye’. As the originator of this idea said, it’s a good idea to round off the needle’s point as it will prevent snagging.

If you don’t have a hole punch you could pop it over some plasticine or Blue Tac and pierce a hole with a skewer – definitely a job for Adult Helper though.

I made quite a few as little fingers tend to drop them on the floor and lose them! They’re quite sturdy though and should see us through a few projects like this.

We knotted a length of wool onto the CD and began making the ‘spokes’ to create a loom. The instructions on Make it a Wonderful Life said to make sure you have an odd number of spokes (in this way, as you come back your starting point, the wool passes under instead of over and vice versa, making a tight pattern). I would add that more is more – the more spokes you have, the tighter the weave. The first two CD looms we made had only 7 and 9 spokes which made the weave very open and loose.

Once your spokes are in place, you can start weaving! We tied our first piece of wool onto the back of the loom but this made things a bit fiddly, so it may be best to glue the first strand to the disk or just weave around the first spoke a couple of times to secure it.

Trial and error are part of the fun!

Use wool and recycled CDs to make artwork

We all had a great time with our individual looms! Surprisingly (to me) – my 5 year old daughter was the most into it and actually completed hers (albeit a mini one – she just thought it looked nice like that!) My 7 year old boy is usually more focussed on crafts but he declared his “Done for now” and said he’d return to it at a later date. My own one is the fullest but due to only having a few spokes it has quite a loose fluffy look.

Daughter’s mini masterpiece

My effort

Son’s Work in Progress

My plan is to make a few more and hang them vertically in a single line – a great boredom buster for kids and adult alike, don’t you think? x

Posted in Craft with kids, Home Decor, Upcycled or Repurposed and tagged cheap craft ideas, crafts with kids, DIY, Easy crafts, handmade, home decor, rainy day fun, recycled, Repurposed, scrap wool project, Upcycled, weaving

31 Jan 2015

17 Comments

Jeans Upcycle – Cute girl’s apron

I’m feeling very pleased to have finished another recycled denim jeans project this week – I’m on a roll now!

As I mentioned in my last post, my friend gave me two pairs of jeans she no longer had use for, knowing my obsession with repurposing clothes! At the same time, my niece (a budding seamstress herself) sent me this video link to a great re-use for jeans – cutting the backside and waistband off to make a garden apron.

The video tutorial shows you how in seconds you can create a little garden apron from your jeans. I immediately took the shears to my friend’s old jeans and reproduced the apron, but decided to “girlify” it a bit by adding a little ruffle.

Rather cuter now I felt – but probably more of an “indoors” apron that a gardening one. In which case, it needed a bit more work. You’ll notice the cut at the side seams left a rather frayed raw edge that needed some attention.

Cut edge of denim jeans for making an apron

Hmm, that edge won’t do at all…

So I added some binding with a pretty fabric to contrast the ruffle fabric. Then I had a dilemma – should I top-stitch from the front of the binding, to neaten it up, or should I go for a cleaner look?

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I’ve no doubt everyone has their own view; I put it to both my sewing circle and Twitter friends (I take part in the excellent #makedoandmendhour on Twitter on Thursdays 8-9pm UK time). Needless to say opinion was fairly evenly divided. In the end, my horror of unpicking stitching led me to conclude it was better with! 😀

A bit more ruffling (who doesn’t love a good ruffle??)

and one of my favourite fabric flowers later…

and I’m pretty happy with the result!

Now you can all tell me off for stitching over my binding – I can take it 😉 x

Posted in Homemade gifts, Upcycled or Repurposed and tagged cheap craft ideas, denim jeans, DIY, diy teacher gift, Easy crafts, Etsy, flowers, gifts, handmade, homemade, rainy day fun, recycled, Repurposed, scrap fabric buster, Sewing & Fabric, Upcycled

23 Jan 2015

11 Comments

WIPs – Denim and more Denim

This week I have been mainly trying to complete a couple of WIPs (works in progress) without getting distracted by the fantastic crafts I’ve seen on some of the blogs I follow! Ideas like The Renegade Seamstress’s beautiful sweater boots which are so tempting with the cold snap we’ve been experiencing recently in south east England, or trying free machine quilting as demonstrated so cleverly by Sewchet.

However, I recently started wading through my ex-denim jeans stash to make up some more denim pocket purses and I really want to get something finished!

Firstly this cute mini pocket which belonged to my daughter’s age 3-4 jeans.

The flower was an experiment with a new method for making scrap fabric flowers: using a circle of fabric, I sewed a running stitch around the perimeter then pulled it as you would a drawstring bag and knotted the ends. Then I pressed it flat and it made this lovely effect – almost like a pinwheel I think! The button already had a nice bright cover which complements the fabric.

Not exactly finished, but on its way!

I had more success with this denim purse, which I have Actually Finished!!

The slowest part of making these mini bags is hand sewing the fabric patch onto the back, as it involves stitching through a layer of denim and the fabric itself using tiny stitches to keep them as invisible as possible. I can’t wait until we have the long, sun-filled evenings of summer to work by, instead of squinting in the gloom at tiny stitches …

I used the same upcycled fabric on the front of the purse to make a little flower – this one uses the hem of the original t-shirt and stitched it into a coiled flower shape. I was rather pleased with the effect.

A thin ribbon strap was the last piece of the jigsaw and the denim pocket purse is complete. Hurrah!

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So one WIP now complete, one still ongoing – but whoops! – my friend gave me some jeans of hers and I accidentally started a new project involving an apron and some ruffles. Eek! More on this soon…! x

Posted in Homemade gifts, Upcycled or Repurposed and tagged bags, cheap craft ideas, denim jeans, DIY, Easy crafts, flowers, gifts, handmade, rainy day fun, recycled, Repurposed, scrap fabric buster, Sewing & Fabric, Upcycled

02 Jan 2015

12 Comments

Handmade Greetings Card – a fabric scrap project

I made this greetings card for a wedding. The couple’s theme included Shabby Chic and butterflies so I came up with this delicate design with simplistic running stitch to add to the Shabby charm!

I simply drew the butterfly wings and used a scalpel to carefully remove the shapes. I drew in the butterflies’ bodies with a Sharpie pen, then inside the card I placed my scrap fabric pieces so they more than covered the cut-out wing shapes and secured with tape. The fun part was sewing with thread around the wings to bond the fabric to the card and finish the look. There is something about sewing into card that reminds me of being a small child, with those pre-punched cards in one hand and my huge needle and wool thread in the other 😀

For a professional finish I cut a rectangle of card just a bit smaller than the front and glued it over the taped fabric to tidy it up inside the card.

You might recognise the fabrics I used for this project – the blue and white fabric which always reminds me of those lovely Willow china plates was used in both my charity sweetie jars and fabric flowers and butterfly brooch. The other pretty fabric was one I actually bought (as opposed to repurposing from clothes or acquiring from a charity shop suitcase purchase!) to make my mum’s messenger bag.

An easy fabric scrap-busting project to use those last little pieces of favourite fabric, and I think it makes a charming keepsake card for a special occasion, but I’d love to know what you think!

I’m linking this post up to Creative Jewish Mom and the other link parties I join in with – have a look at some of the talented people over there if you have a few minutes! x ——>