Jitesh Arora asked:




If your child is headed back to school soon you probably need to get your list ready for all the items you need to shop for. It can be a long list now a days, and you want to be sure you get everything they need. You don’t want your child calling you on the first day of school in a panic saying the need something for class. If your child is in elementary or middle school you may need to include art supplies on your list. If your child is in high school there may be an added fees to their school enrollment if the have signed up for art class, as well as art supplies needed. Every school is different, so check with your child’s school to be sure you get all the supplies they need. Often schools will offer you a list of items that your child will need for the school year.

Here is a general list of art supplies that children may need:

Glue stick

Scissors
Crayons

Colored Pencils

Markers

Water Color Paints

Play-Doh (for elementary age)

Sketch Pads

Now that you have your art supply list ready, make sure you get everything else your child needs too. This will help make the school year start off on the right foot. Now they can come home with all those great pictures and crafts they make in school. So get your refrigerator ready, you know every child likes to see there art work displayed for everyone to see.

Florin Ciobanu asked:




Anyone who loves to do a variety of crafts and hobbies knows just how difficult it can be to find room for everything inside your home. Once you start developing hobbies, the materials and resources you have for that hobby just seem to multiple all on their own. And this makes it very frustrating for you and your family too. You love your hobby and can’t resist buying new things for it every time you come across great materials and sales, but your home is overflowing so much that you feel like you can barely walk around everything sometimes.

And this is where storage sheds can be a wonderful addition to your home. Using an outdoor storage shed for your craft materials not only opens up room in your home, it also gives you plenty of space to help keep all your materials more organized. There are many different types of hobbies we all have though, so here are several ideas for how a storage shed can help with one or more of your own, or your family’s favorite hobbies.
Whether you love to crochet, knit, sew clothing, create quilts, or embroidery, if you’re like the rest of us you have tons of extra supplies. It’s just not possible to resist a sale on beautiful yarns or fabrics, and you know you’ll use everything sooner or later, right?

Well using a storage shed to keep these materials is an excellent way to keep it from over running your home, and it also does wonders for helping you to keep things organized. When you use a storage building to keep your craft and hobby materials, you can set up small bins on shelves to hold buttons, threads, and scrap materials for instance.

You can also have larger bins and containers to hold your crochet or knitting yarns – in fact you can separate yarns into bins based on projects, or based on colors, then just label the bins so you’ll be able to easily find the yarns you want at any time.

Use other bins to hold your fabrics for sewing, scrapbooking or other hobbies too, and again separate these by color, fabric type, or project you plan to use them for.

Try putting in a filing cabinet, shelves, or small bins to hold your project patterns and instructions too. You could have individual binders on shelves for instance, which hold your crochet or knitting patterns, clothing sewing patterns, and Scrapbooks you create too.

Stephanie Watson asked:




Laundry and Sewing Dollhouse Furniture

One place that brings a lot of notice in your dollhouse is a laundry or sewing room. For old-fashioned dollhouses, a sewing room will fit right in; in more modern dollhouses, the laundry room is a perfect addition. Each room needs just a couple accessories, like a thread box or an ironing board, to draw the admiration of any onlookers.

Picking Walnut Material for Dollhouse Furniture

Walnut is a special type of wood that grows slow and dense. Its grain and color are very traditional and fit very comfortable in any dollhouse. Walnut wood is optimal for kitchen sets and bedroom dollhouse sets. Walnut is also great due to its durable nature.

Metal Dollhouse Furniture

Quality furniture does not always have to be made out of wood; there are many great pieces that would not be available if not for some great metal craftsmen. Take barbecues for example, I mean you dolls need some space for the good old hot dogs and hamburgers don’t they. Other places that you will find metal material is in washers and dryers, outdoor kits, and electrical workings.

Pecan Material for Dollhouses

What most people don’t know about pecans is that it is a great wood for furniture. This type of wood is growing in miniatures and will soon, if it has not already be the dominate type of wood for dollhouse furniture. The hue is a lighter color than that of oak and when you rate wood density it actually falls on the harder side than oak and most other woods. This strength is why it is becoming a more reliable option for modern furniture or home flooring options. We recommend putting this furniture in any style home including modern or Victorian.

Bedroom Furniture

One of the most important areas of your dollhouse is the bedroom. The options are tremendous, since there are so many designs, styles, furniture pieces, and colors available. Many sets come with custom-designed bedding, detailed engravings, and other specialized touches.

Using Porcelain in Dollhouse Furniture

What is the first thing that you think about when you think of porcelain? China, and that is because it was manufactured first in china around the 600s. It has been the material of choice for plates, potter, dishes, and “china”. Fortunately for the miniature enthusiast it also works extremely well with dollhouse furniture. You will see most bathroom sets are made from porcelain creating a beautiful white, glazed color.

Dollhouse Furniture and Oak

Oaks defining quality comes from its grain, and makes dollhouse furniture appear more realistic. It has a lighter color that you will find coordinates with many classical or traditional dollhouses. The lighter color fits well as a great color accent to fabric dollhouse pieces like sofas and chairs. Oak is a great pick for a traditional or modern dollhouse, but the material does lend itself to be used in most any style.

Caley L Walsh asked:




You likely have some sweaters thrown in the back of your closet, damaged with a stain, moth hole or two. Instead of tossing old and unused sweaters, turn them into something new and completely lovable. You can also look for inexpensive sweaters at the thrift store. Crafting with old sweaters saves money on craft materials and helps to reduce your household waste.

Yarn – If you knit, crochet or even weave, salvage the yarn from an old sweater to use in a new project. Find a seam in the sweater and carefully snip one of the seam stitches with a pair of very sharp scissors. Use a blunt needle to lift out the seam stitches, snipping the seam yarn for each. For a knit sweater, you want to unravel the yarn from the cast off edge, generally at the top of the sweater since sweaters are made from the bottom up. Start ripping from the last cast off stitch and carefully wind the yarn into a ball as you go. You should end up with four or more balls of yarn from the different sweater pieces.

Felt – Sweaters that are at least 20% wool can be felted in your washing machine. 100% wool sweaters will give a sturdier felt for different crafts. Make sure the sweater has not been treated to make it washable, such as “superwash, ” as these will not felt. Throw the sweater into a zippered delicates bag and wash on high heat. Dry on high heat, cleaning the lint trap frequently. Some sweaters require more than one wash and dry to fully felt. The sweater will eventually shrink dramatically and will be ready to cut apart!

Pillows – Use a pillow form to help you measure and mark the size for your throw pillow on the old sweater. You need a sewing machine for this project or a bit of patience with hand sewing.

Potholders – Stitch several layers of the old sweater together and add binding or trim around the edges to create potholders. You can also use thick quilt batting to fill the inside of your upcycled sweater potholder.

Plastic Bag Holder – Have a dog you need to clean up after on walks? Use the sleeve of an older sweater to create a handy plastic bag holder to hang from a door. The stretchy wrist end is perfect for the bottom and you don’t even need to stitch it closed. Just cut the shoulder seam and sew a neater edge. You can add embellishments such as ric – rac at the edges or cut out “Dog Walk” in fabric letters and appliqu? to the sweater sleeve. Loop a piece of elastic and sew to the top to hang from a door.

Brooches – A brooch adds instant style to any jacket, sweater or bag. Either felt the sweater first to prevent unraveling or double – stitch a flower shape with your sewing machine. Use a fabric pencil to mark a simple floral design and double stitch over this design. Cut out the shape at least 1 cm away from the stitch line. Stitch and cut out another floral shape slightly smaller than the first. Layer the two flowers and sew together with an interesting button.

Coffee Cup Sleeves or Water Bottle Cozies – Cut a band in your old sweater sleeve to make a coffee cup sleeve, or use a larger piece of the sleeve for a water bottle cozy. You can felt the sweater first to make a more solid material fit for embroidery and other embellishing.

Paper Craft – Cut out small pieces of wool for embellishing scrapbook pages or handmade cards. Cut out letters or even tiny sweater or scarf shapes for autumn. Make a wonderfully textured tree with an old fuzzy angora sweater.

Blanket or Quilt – If you have several old sweaters, turn them into lovely blanket or quilt. You can cut the sweaters into blocks or varying shapes, and even use the ribbing for the edges of the blanket. Some sweaters may be too thick for the sewing machine, so you will have to pin and hand – sew pieces together with right sides facing and ? inch seam allowance. If seams do not lay flat after steam – ironing, hand – stitch seams to back of the blanket. Thinner sweaters can be sewn with the sewing machine and can be given a fabric backing.

Toys – Whether felted or not, old sweaters are a great material for making toys or stuffed animals. Create a puppet with the sleeve of a sweater. Hem the cut edge to prevent fraying. To make the head of the puppet, you can simply sew the cuff together straight across or trim a curved line and sew. For a puppet with hair, gather a few inches of the cuff and weave the thread back and forth. Pull tight and secure the thread. Cut off some of the gathered cuff to leave fuzzy hair.

Lance Winslow asked:




There are many materials that are used as craft supplies, and we often think of materials used to make blankets, bird houses, pottery, clothing, scrapbooks, dolls, and other nifty creations as common craft supplies like yarn, cloth, wood, clay, paints, and perhaps even plastics. Not often do we think about vinyl, still many of the crafts that we make do need vinyls. We cannot make everything out of leather, nor does it make sense to.

Vinyls are a very cheap material, and it comes in an array of colors, not to mention it’s very easy to get. If you are truly into arts and crafts I recommend that you can retake a look at using more vinyls in your projects. Now, I realize many people are purists, and they’ve been handed down their talents and crafts from previous generations, generations, which never had the abundance of vinyl material have today, but we live in the present and we makes crafts and gifts and present periods, not in past periods.

Of course, everyone that makes crafts-and-gifts and has wonderful projects as well as a certain way of doing things, and they like to do things their way. I am not one to stand in the way of your concepts, or ideas of how things should be done, rather I am simply reminding you of potential opportunities that you may be passing up, or may not have thought of.

Often, I find it amazing that folks spend so much time going to thrift stores, scouting throwaway materials, and walking up and down each child of arts and crafts stores, and yet, forget about one of the easiest materials to use; vinyl. Please consider all this.