Super chain! Here’s just what you’ve always needed. An enormous, oversized fake chain! If you are in charge of props for a school play or community theater group, or if you need a mondo-humongous chain for a Halloween or haunted house decoration, this is the project for you! My sister Cindy, who often acts as prop mistress for […]

  I happen to have a lot of small circular pictures (created using a 1-inch craft punch). You may remember these from the bottlecap necklace project I did a while back. I took 6 of these and made a set of magnets out of them.  l had punched all of them from the same magazine illustration, so that […]

My friend, Nichole, has three daughters and they like ribbon hair bows. But the bows can be rather expensive, especially in multiples of three! So she and her daughters (Taylor, Brieana, and Alivia) decided to make their own. They gathered pretty ribbons and hot-glued them in loops, then glued all the loops together to form bows. A […]

So I recently had a blast participating in Craftster’s “One Tiny Harry Potter Thing” swap. My partner said she liked Minerva McGonnagall, so I decided to make her quill / pencil cup. Since Professor McGonnagall is the head of Gryffindor house, I put a Gryffindor crest on the front of the cup. Since she is Scottish,  I […]

I was enchanted when I saw some wonderful, roughly-quilted scrapbooks on one of my current favorite web sites, Craftster. The creator of these lovely books, Craftster’s Phizzychick, credited Teesha Moore, who has a series of YouTube videos showing how to make these gorgeous journals and scrapbooks. I owe my cousin a wedding present, so it was […]

Pull-string surprise egg This is a fun way to bestow Easter treats. When the recipient pulls the embedded ribbon, it breaks the paper mache egg in half to spill its hidden treasures. What you will need: An oval balloon Several yards of ribbon Tissue paper Your favorite papier mache glue (I use wallpaper paste) Glass jar […]

Bottlecap necklaces These are so cool I wish I could take credit for the idea, but they are all over the Internet. All you do is collect and clean some bottlecaps (or buy them at a craft store), glue little pictures inside, then turn them into jewelry! Here’s what I used for mine: A one-inch […]

How to give an egg timer a tri-metal upgrade There is just something magical and enchanting about hourglasses. Can’t you visualize the witch’s giant hourglass with blood-red sand, counting down the minutes to poor Dorothy’s demise in the classic movie, The Wizard of Oz? Or imagine Hermione’s “Time Turner” necklace from the wizarding world depicted in Harry Potter and […]

How to make a business card holder from scrapbook cardstock   Here is a quick project that only requires some patterned cardstock from the scrapbooking section of your local craft store, some scissors, and some glue or double-stick tape. From these, you can create a stylish business card holder to sit on your desk or sales […]

How to make a customized letter opener The other day, my teenage son (who is at an age where he is getting lots of mail from different universities who sincerely want our money) was asking for a letter opener. We looked around the house (I know that there is one around here, somewhere…) to no avail. […]

How to make a luggage tag from an old credit card or gift card Once you have cancelled a credit card or finished using  a plastic gift card, what can you do with it, besides tossing it in the trash? Here is one idea: give it new life by turning it into a luggage tag. […]

Design and make your own write-on wipe-off board Message boards are so useful, and yet most of them are so…. well, let’s face it — UGLY. Wouldn’t it be great to have one that actually coordinated with your decor? One that made a statement (even when there was no message written on it?) Well, here you […]

How to make unique cookie shapes I really, REALLY like to decorate cookies. It combines art and dessert, both of which I adore! Fairly early in my cookie-decorating career, I began to want cookie cutter shapes that were not readily available at shops in my town. Then I discovered some wonderful Internet sources like Foose […]

Ascending Marble Toy I designed this fun marble-rolling toy many years ago, inspired by a similar toy from the 1880’s. The object is to make a marble or small ball climb from the bottom of the box all the way to the top, as quickly as possible. Then you turn the box 180 degrees and […]

Here is a great Valentine card with a pop-up message (LOVE). I’ll show you how to do the basic technique, and then you can easily adapt the card to express your own message. You can use the card for a variety of different holidays and occasions by changing the one-word message: Christmas (NOEL), Halloween (BOO), New Year (the […]

Need place card holders for a wedding? Or maybe signs for a bake sale? Here is a quick and inexpensive solution: tea light card holders. All you need are tea lights/votive candles, wire (I used 18 gauge), wire cutters, and needle nose pliers. First, measure and cut some lengths of wire. Mine were 4.5 inches […]

When I was in junior high school, I worked in the school’s library. I think it was actually an elective course I took, to get out of taking a foreign language. While I now regret that I do not speak foreign languages, working in the library had its own rewards. Re-shelving required me to focus my […]

Can you guess what this picture frame was, in its former life…? Something found in just about every household… that gets emptied frequently… and that people throw away when empty… … … … Wait for it… … … … … a tissue box! Of course, it takes quite a few embellishments to transform a humble tissue box […]