These days, we’re finding ways to celebrate our loved ones from afar, so it’s a great time to make a handmade card! And it’s always a good time to use recycled materials. With that in mind, I made some easy pop-up cards for The Week Junior magazine! I love the typography and colors of coated cardboard from the recycle bin, and it makes a sturdy pop-up!
Read MoreMy brother and I used to make marble runs out of blocks and his Hot Wheels track and it was one of our favorite things to do! I made this marble run out of recycle bin items like paper towel tubes and recycled cardboard for the new-ish magazine, The Week Junior. Have you seen it? It is a fantastic news and activity magazine for children aged 8-14. I am thrilled to be contributing to their How To column!
Read MoreI was thrilled to contribute to today’s New York Times for Kids section! This issue is mostly dedicated to coronavirus’s impact on kids and advice for dealing with life in isolation. For example, if your craft supplies are running low, the newspaper itself will provide all the materials you need for a fun meditative origami project, paper cranes!
Read MoreYesterday, I did a really fun Instagram Live for @CountryLivingMag and showed how to make these easy coffee filter flowers, and a few ways to use them to create spring decorations for your table and home. I have made a LOT of paper flowers in my life and the are THE EASIEST...and fastest!! They take only a few second to make each once the filters are dyed and dried. The bigger step here is dyeing the coffee filters which also really easy (and fun!) but allow a few hours to overnight to let the filters dry. Dye as many as you can and use them for lots of flower projects! (We have a whole chapter of coffee filter projects in our book!) By the way, I used food coloring to dye these flowers since they will be coming into contact with drinks. If you're not using these near food or drink, you could use thinned out craft paint to dye them instead.
Read MoreAs I’ve written many many times, recycled toilet and paper towel tubes are some of my favorite materials. The charm of these animals is that they are animal-like but still look like cardboard tubes— cylindrical and raw cardboard brown. (Though, of course, painting them is a fun thing for little kids to do!) Older kids handy with scissors can make these creatures and adults should handle any cuts made with the utility knife. Once they see how many ways there are to cut cardboard tubes, they will come up with tons of ideas of their own! Create a habitat by cutting paper watering holes and cardboard trees. The eyes are made by hole- punching black construction paper. To glue on tiny circles and other shapes, dot glue onto the tube with a toothpick. Alternatively, the features can be drawn on with a marker.
Read MoreCereal and pretzel “snacklaces” require little more than kitchen twine. As an activity for little kids, it is a chance to talk about colors or patterning and sequencing...and it is fun! Set out some bowls of cereal or pretzels, all with holes for threading string through. I’ve made these with dried fruit too: this best for kids old enough to use a needle (clean the needle first).
Read MoreMany of you probably remember being a kid and making stained-glass cookies where you crush hard candies and melt them inside a cutout cookie frame. That was my entry into the world of (easy) candymaking with store-bought candy…and I was hooked!
When trying this with kids, adults should handle the hot work of candy shaping but kids can have fun arranging the unmelted candies on a cool baking sheet and then seeing what results. You’ll never quite know how your melted candy will turn out, since happy (and, well, not-so-happy) accidents can happen! Flowers are lots of fun to create and organic shapes are forgiving! For this project, over-melting and under-melting yield interesting and pretty surprises!
These modular building blocks are a variation on the giant cardboard blocks I posted about here and are great use for smaller boxes! Young city planners can use them with their train tracks, cars, and other toys! I used a cut piece of a sponge to stamp on the windows and a half of a toilet tube to stamp the scalloped roof tile design (and another toilet tube for the chimney).
Read MoreIf you’ve visited this blog before, you may know that my one of my favorite materials is recycled toilet paper and paper towel cardboard tubes. Never throw them away! You can make letters, holiday decorations like these, these, and these, pretend ice cream cones, annnnnd these sea creatures! They’re fun to make and can be strung together into a mobile for a cute room decoration.
Grownups can help by cutting the slits (which require a craft knife). Using pinking shears or zig zag paper edgers adds spikiness to the fish fins and is a quick way to add a mouthful of teeth to the shark!
Read MoreHave you tried punch needling? It is similar to rug hooking in it’s finished look but made with a different action (and tool). It’s fun, meditative, and surprisingly easy. The technique is forgiving and it’s easy to go back and fix mess-ups, like adding stitches.
I made this cute walrus last year for Bluprint. It’s an easy starter project, and winter is the perfect time for a cozy indoor craft! You can click over to their site to get the full how-to, including a video.
After my last post, where I used recycled cardboard (a FAVORITE material) to make animals, I wanted to keep going! (And, I still had quite a few boxes leftover from the holiday packages waiting to be transformed!) Years ago, I’d made a few cardboard bird ornaments for a magazine story that never materialized and I thought I would make a few more and transform them into Valentines. Why bird Valentines? I dunno…because I like birds….because…lovebirds? (I know, I know, these don’t look like actual lovebirds!) You can cut any animal (or any shape) you want and give your sweetheart a little art from the heart! Also, don’t you love the way painted cardboard looks?
Read MoreAre you looking for an inexpensive and handmade (but easy) kid gift idea? Look no farther! This is the time of year where a lot of us have cardboard boxes in our recycle bin…and you don’t need much else to make these cardboard animal kits!
Read MoreOn the last Sunday of every month, the New York Times publishes a special print-only Kids section, and it is always fantastic! You’ll want to keep every issue, with it’s incredible writing , design, illustration and photography. This past Sunday’s issue, just in time for Halloween, is the FEAR issue, featuring “a lake full of bones, how fear drives the economy, why the news is scarier than a horror movie” and more…including my donut hole eyeball croquembouche, lychee eyeball drink, shrunken apple heads, and DIY scorpion costume!!
Read MoreI was recently asked by my one of my absolute favorite blogs, Cup of Jo, to to come up with a few easy DIY costumes using clothes from one of my favorite kid’s brands, Primary as a base. Starting with solid color leggings and t-shirts is how I made most of my real-life kid’s costumes as well as those that I’ve made as a professional crafter. I was tasked with making them doable “even for people who are hopelessly uncrafty”, my favorite challenge! The following costumes are no-sew, quick to put together, and utilize a few items that you might have around the house!
Read MoreIf your family, like mine, are big Stranger Things fans, channel the creepiness to inspire your Halloween party! I worked with Family Circle to create ST-themed crafts and decorations like the Upside Down portal (below), '80s photo wall and an Eggo buffet (essential)! Click here for the buffet details and here for the string lights wall.
Read MoreI worked with Parents magazine to come up with easy DIY costumes for busy parents for their October issue …like these sweet donuts! I love working with Parents…and I love the concept of this story! I may be a professional crafter, but as a busy parent, quick and easy costumes have always been my go-to! Here are a few (messy) behind-the-scenes shots of my prep…but do click over to Parents to see all the pretty final photos!
Read MoreNew school supplies always helped to soften my childhood back-to-school blues. I loved decorating my pristine new notebooks, binders, and folders with stickers, doodles, and tape. In that spirit, I created some back-to-school crafts for Parents magazine! In the photo above are some fruit-themed items: tape and marker-decorated folders, stamped pencil cases, and washi tape-covered pencils. Super easy!
Read MoreValentines Day has always been a favorite crafting holiday. I’m just a sucker for pink, red, and hearts! I’ve gathered a few of my favorite projects from over the years, like these freezer paper stenciled muslin bags I made for Martha Stewart Living magazine a few years ago. Slip a love note, some candy, or even a gift of jewelry inside for your sweetheart. Click here for full instructions!
*By the way, freezer paper stenciling is one of my favorite techniques! You can find freezer paper at most supermarkets (or here). It is paper with a plastic coating on one side. After cutting a shape out (ie. a heart) you iron the paper onto your bag (shiny plastic side down) and you have an almost foolproof one-use stencil. If you use a craft punch to make your stencil shapes, as I did with the small hearts here, it is a breeze!
Soapmaking is a simple, fun, and satisfying project; perfect for when winter weather keeps us indoors. There’s not much to it; you use a store-bought soap base, melt it, tint it with a colorant, and pour it in a mold. I have used clear glycerin soap base, such as here, but had never used an opaque soap base and I loved the bright colors that can be achieved! Once you get set up, it’s easy to crank out a bunch of soap bars. I made these for Bluprint and we shot a fun video to show how easy they are to make!
Read MoreGingerbread houses are fun to bake and build, but these little Valentine cottages, from my book, Candy Aisle Crafts, are made from graham crackers, allowing you to skip the baking and get to the best part -- decorating! They make a pretty Valentine's centerpiece or mantle decoration, too. For a great playdate or snow-day activity, pre-make the house bases, one for each kid, and set out bowls of candy for decorations.
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©2015 Jodi Levine. All photographs by Amy Gropp Forbes unless otherwise noted.
