Posts tagged ‘thrift’

For Valentine’s Day, Devona made heart-shaped crayons with a candy mold, double broiler, and broken crayons.  It inspired me to make the crayons with different colored chunks in them.  (Those were always my favorite as a kid.)  I made lots of mistakes & even ended up with ugly brown when everything melts together, but now I have lots of tips to share with you!

Supplies: double broiler (I used a pan & glass jar, but a tin can would be great as well), water for the double broiler, a mold for the crayons (I used a brownie pan with dividers, but you can use candy molds, soap molds, candle molds, or other make-shift molds), broken crayons, knife, cutting board, & a stove top.    Other useful optional items: towel (for drying the glass jar), spoon or popsicle stick (for mixing wax), and oven mitt. Read more »

Our Art Supplies Swap was really great even though it was a small group of only 10 of us.  I think it’s because the sun was shining & it reached 40 degrees outside for the first time in months.

Everyone generously brought lots of art supplies and found useful things to take home.  The few boxes of leftovers were donated to the Firestone Branch of Akron-Summit County Public Library for their craft programs.

5 people brought handmade items for the gift exchange.  Mary made the purple hat (this pic of it on the table doesn’t do it justice.  This hat looks amazing with the bunched area worn off to the side and it sits loose & casually on the head).  Megan made the wire wrapped clip (for recipes or labeling foods at a party).  I made the fringe earrings.  Devonna made the apron from a repurposed skirt.  And Martha, the owner of Craft Akron, made the hand-dyed yarn.

The plan is to have the next swap in late summer or early fall.  So you have plenty of time to sort through your stash.

Our Swap is Saturday!  Here’s a pic of all the stuff I’m bringing…spray paint, candle making supplies, beads, magazines, sizzix dies, gold leafing, mosaic adhesive & grout, and other odds & ends.  Plus, I’m busy getting refreshments ready.  I’m making chocolate fondue and a cheese ball with crackers.

Since I don’t have a boy around to model for me, Cressida is playing stand-in.

I really have to thank Cal Patch for her book Design it Yourself Clothes for making this draft so easy. She gave me the rules to follow where I was taking educated guesses before. So although there are no youth patterns in her book the explanations included are pretty universal.

This is just a first draft of the romper. I did not take into account how big a diaper is, so the rise is about two inches off. I’m going to adjust my pattern and make one out of a men’s shirt I really like. Wish me luck!

Lots of great items were brought to our first swap!

Clever Nesting is hosting our second Art Supplies Swap in February.  Bring your art & craft supplies, books/magazines, plus anything else that may be repurposed or reused creatively. This is an opportunity to clear out unused supplies & get some new ones, plus network with other creatives. Extra supplies will be donated to local nonprofits.

Immediately following the swap, you’re welcome to participate in a handmade gift exchange.  You’ll share your creative work & take home a gift as well. All you need to do is bring an original handmade item with your contact info included.

Event Info:  Saturday February 20 1-2:30pm at Craft Akron.  Cost is $5 which covers refreshments & room rental.

Items from last year's Zero Landfill

If you’re artistic & want to build your stash of recycled supplies, come to Zero Landfill!  It’s an event where architects, interior designers, and graphic designers donate their discontinued samples & materials so that artists & teachers can collect & reuse them.  You’ll find paint samples, tiles, carpets, wallpaper books, fabric samples, and binders, and you can have them for free!

The event will be happening in downtown Akron every Saturday in February from noon-3pm at 30 N. High Street.    Plus they have events on the calendar in Chattanooga, TN & Cleveland, OH.

Olivia has been asking for a “kid sewing machine” for a year, ever since she saw one at JoAnn’s around Christmas time when she was 4. I told her she had to wait until she was older, mostly because I didn’t want to buy such an expensive toy, not knowing if she’d really want to use it.

Well, on a routine Thrift Store Trip this past week we saw one in the toy department. Olivia was the first to notice it and into our cart it went. I would have paid $30 for it, even second hand. But this glorious find was a remarkable $1.50! I was certain it wouldn’t work but at that price it was worth the gamble.

We took it home and popped two size C batteries in it and it just chugged along just like it should. It works! It is a chainsitching machine, so it has no bobbin to get messed up. The stitches are not the most secure but it really sews. But the most valuable thing of all is that it has an advance wheel, presser foot with arm, and a foot pedal, all which work exactly the same way as they do on a larger machine. So as Olivia learns to use this little machine, she will be gaining the basic skills needed to use a real machine when the time comes. And with the enthusiasm she is showing for this little toy machine, the real thing is probably right around the corner!

In the spirit of a new year & reflecting about Clever Nesting’s previous year of blogging, I thought I’d share my favorite 2009 tutorials that Devona’s written.

Do you ever find beautiful sweaters at the thrift store but realize they’re too stretched out or shrunken to wear?  In Knitting with an Old Sweater Devona shows how to unravel those sweaters and reuse the yarn for new projects, so that pretty yarn won’t be wasted.

In Throw Pillow with Piping Trim, Devona teaches how to use strips of cut t-shirts for the piping on a pillow.  You’ll save money on expensive piping and have a way to use those stained or stretched t-shirts besides for rags.

And here’s an idea reusing ties when the fabric’s great, but the men in your life will surely never wear them!  Devona teaches how to Make a Composition Cover from an Old Tie.

And finally, let me just say I’ve loved working with Devona on the Clever Nesting blog this past year!  She’s so innovative with her crafty reuse & recycling ideas.  She’s also a wealth of information about a variety of crafts & thrilled to learn more.  Plus she’s an idea queen…you should hear all her ambitious plans for the next few years!

I’ve been slowly going room to room in my house to reorganize the spaces better.  So, when rethinking my pantry area, I needed to better see my wines instead of standing them up and pushing them to the back of the shelf.

My first thought was to shop for wine shelves.  My second thought was “do I have anything in the house that might work?”  Lucky for me, I saved some money and reused this metal shelf that previously held two metal drawers.

I keep many odd things that I’m not using just in case I can find alternative uses for them.  As another example, I’m keeping these tops from my dishwasher utensils tray.  I have zero intentions of using them with the dishwasher but can’t part with them yet.  Do you have an idea of how I can use them?  I think they have potential for organizing something…

I have lots of cardboard record cases left over from the record bowls I made for Christmas gifts.  Some of the pictures on the cases are really fun, so I needed a way to reuse them.  I decided to make them into file folders. Read more »