Chalkboard Wall

Chalkboard Wall Paint is such a great invention! I found this picture on curbly and thought I'd share with everyone. You can find this paint at your local hardware store that supplies paint, Benjamin Moore particularly makes this kind of paint for your walls. I've been finding so many different uses for chalkboard wall paint. Real Simple shows you how to make a wall mural for kids to draw on. The DIY Network has a tutorial on how to make an actual chalkboard with a chair rail frame to hold chalk and erasers. This would be great to paint on a wall in your home office or your office at work. If you have a creative type job and you don't want to keep wasting paper you can draw your ideas on the chalkboard.

Wire Photo Display

Looking for an inexpensive, interesting way to display your photos? Well, I found a tutorial on curbly on how to create this neat wire photo display. This would be really nice looking in your home office. It's also pretty easy to switch out photos fairly often. I could picture this in a gallery as a way to display your photography.

Felted Sweater Rug

This is such a great looking rug you can make by felting sweaters. To felt sweaters you have to wash them with the least amount of hot water and a small amount of laundry soap until they shrink. I can just picture this rug outside at a camp or cottage in the summertime. You can purchase a pdf pattern at dulcecreations etsy shop. It's only $5 for the pattern and if you already have some old sweaters you don't wear anymore this would be such an inexpensive craft project.

Ikea Lamp Hack

The Ikea Hacker blog has a lot of great diy projects and ideas for Ikea furniture and decorations. Ikea is affordable and trendy to begin with, these projects can give you good ideas to make your purchases original and great looking. I love this one Ikea Hack, you can find a tutorial here on how to decoupage the grono lamps. The lamp is only $5.99!

DIY Vinyl Record Bowl

I've been seeing these record bowls everywhere and finally came across a tutorial and thought I'd share. I like how this one looks it's not a perfect bowl shape. You can find the tutorial on the Cut Out + Keep website. All you gotta do is go to a record store or flea market and buy some really cheap records you would never listen to.

Fortune Teller

Remember the fortune teller game when you were a little kid? You would choose a color, the person holding the origami game would count out the letters, then you would choose a number and get your fortune. For some reason playing this game came to my mind and couldn't remember how to fold the paper. I found this site that has a tutorial on how to fold the paper and play the game. The site also has tutorials on other origami kids crafts.

DIY Vinyl Wall Art

Curbly has a really great tutorial on how to make these contact paper wall art designs. This type of decoration seems to be popular right now especially for babies rooms. With the contact paper you can easily peal it off the wall and change the design as the baby gets older. If you are good at drawing you can make your own stencil and cut it out of the contact paper or you can find stencils at local art supply stores. You can also find the contact paper at a local hardware store, or I found this great online shop that has a great variety of colors and designs.

My Own Creation: Handbag

I just crocheted this lovely little handbag in two nights. I got the pattern from the Stitch N' Bitch book "The Happy Hooker". This project was pretty easy, the crochet stitch used throughout is the hdc stitch, the handles are pretty easy as well. I got the fabric at Jo-Ann Fabrics, it was only $1.50 for a pre-cut piece. The ribbon was only $1 at Michaels and I bought a snap kit as well for $3. All in all this was a pretty easy and cheap project, but looks very nice! I created another one a month ago and posted it on my blog. Instead of ribbon I crocheted some flowers and sewed them onto the bag.

Making Envelopes

Another cool find on Etsy Labs... a tutorial on how to create your own envelopes. They added a PDF you can trace on cardboard to use as a template. This would be another great way to use that fancy scrap book paper or card stock. I can't wait until Christmas comes around again, I'll be making cards for everyone and my own envelopes.

Car Trash Bag Tutorial

Finny Knits designed this fabulous trash bag for your car. Here is a link to the tutorial. This is such a good idea, you can place a plastic bag in it so you don't get it messy and replace as it gets full. There is even a pocket where you can place tissue paper or any miscellaneous items that would normally be thrown in the back seat. This would be great for road trips where you collect tons of trash.

Make Your Own Stamp

Finally I've found a great tutorial on making your own stamp. I've been wanting to create my own stamps for cards or envelopes but I never knew what type of materials or utensils you needed to do so. Creating your own personalized stamp would be a nice touch to a gift card or tag you would include when you ship packages from etsy or sell crafts at a fair. You can find this tutorial on Etsy Labs, they have some other really great tutorials.

Box Templates

Head over to Paper and More and you will find these box templates and many more. I live far away from most of my family members, so I have to mail everyone their gifts. Now that I've been getting into crafting, what better way to package your creations than your own custom made boxes! I love the tiny take out box, these would even be great to use to hold party favors. You could choose any kind of card stock to your liking at a local craft supply store or Paper and More trace out the template, cut and put together.

Wall Art Tutorial

This is a great, easy way to create some decorative wall art. I found this tutorial on craftplace.org on how to create these contemporary art pieces from scrapbook paper. You'll need to go to home decorating and contempo wall art, I couldn't get a direct link. I was in Jo-Ann Fabrics the other day looking for acetate, which I couldn't find. But I started looking at all the different types of paper for scrap booking. They had solid colors, all kinds of patterns, raised and textured patterns, scalloped edging, metallic paper and much more. I'm sure you could find paper to match your decor.

Goldfish Cat Toy

If you head over to the Lion Brand website they have a whole bunch of free patterns, you just have to sign up for an account and it's freel. I found this really cute goldfish cat toy tutorial on there. It took only 2 hours to crochet and my cat loves it! It's his new favorite toy!

Marble Suncatchers

Found a great way to dress up your patio or it may even look cool inside your house. There is a tutorial on Wisdom of the Moon on how to make these beautiful suncatchers. All you need is fishing wire, flat-backed marbles, masking tape and glass adhesive. This is a great simple project to bring some sparkle to your home. This would look so pretty in a garden.

Ice Candles

I remember making candles like these when i went to girl scout camp many years ago. I always wanted to create them again but I never found a tutorial. Well I found one on Cut Out and Keep. This is sooo easy to make, all you need are crayon shavings to melt and make wax, ice cubes, wicks, and dixie cups or any kind of mold you'd like. You could make them really colorful with different color crayons.

Whimsical Flower Pot Tower

I found this post through curbly on how to make this whimsical flower pot tower. How cool looking is this! This will definitely stand out and be a conversation piece when you have guests over. This is pretty simple to make to. I'll have to wait and try it when i have some yard!

Coffee Table Mosaic

Ikea Hacker has some good tips on their blog about how to customize your Ikea furniture. I liked this mosaic coffee table tutorial. You don't necessarily need an Ikea table to create this, just any flat table you think would work well with the style. I would maybe break up the tiles even more to make the pieces smaller and maybe try putting glass on top so you don't get crumbs stuck in between the tiling. Check out the site for even more tutorials, they are pretty creative.

Recycled Cardboard Gift Boxes

Looking for an eco-friendly, inexpensive way to create a gift box? I found this great tutorial someone posted on Cut Out and Keep. It's a fairly simple tutorial to follow along with. These would be great to box up your crafts in that are sold on etsy. You could wrap up the cardboard and make it a little more pretty or if you make stamps you could put some custom stamps on there to decorate it. I have a ton of cardboard boxes sitting in a closet from moving, this would be a great way to save money and add a little diy touch to your gift boxes.

Cute To The Rescue

CuteToTheRescue is the name of the shop on etsy where you can find this oh so cute bracelet and many more. I love things like this, I would wear it and I think any little girl would love it. The little cupcakes and slices of cake are very detailed and the forks are a whimsical touch. This would be a great craft to try if you are into jewlery making. Looks like the cupcakes and cake slices are made from polymer clay. I just can't get over how cute these jewlery pieces are, check them out for yourself.

Illuminating Lamp Canvas

I found these canvases on the curbly blog you can purchase them on the Hidden Art Shop. But I thought this would make for a cool craft project. You wouldn't even necessarily need to have a lamp painted on the canvas you could paint anything. Then just mount a slim fluorescent light bulb on the wall and put the canvas over it and you have yourself an illuminated canvas.

Computer Keyboard Wallet

I've been finding a lot of really cool tech crafts lately. This keyboard wallet would be a great gift for that techie person in your life. If you still have an old computer keyboard laying around collecting dust you can just take it apart and use the circuit board inside to make this. There is a tutorial on the instructables website, they also suggest making a checkbook cover out of it as well. What a cool idea.

Free Crochet Patterns!

I love crocheting and I like finding new patterns to keep my creative juices flowing. Fablehandmadegoods has some really cool free crochet patterns you can download as a pdf. They also have a shop where you can purchase some of their crochet patterns and eventually sewing patterns, which are really cute! I love the passion flowers, my neighbors use to have a bunch of them growing in their yard they are very pretty.

Moss Hanging Basket

I recently started planting flowers in terracotta pots on my porch. The first time I tried this a few years ago my flowers died, they didn't last long at all. I think that was due to lack of sun I was getting on the porch. Now I have a big porch that receives a lot of sun and my flowers are starting to thrive. I've planted sun flowers, alyssum, marigolds, persian violet and impatiens. I only have a few pots and will probably need to re-pot some of them, I would love to put them in hanging basket like the moss hanging ones. I found this great video tutorial through Curbly on how to make these.

My Own Creation: Cute Amigurumi Rat

Check out my latest creation! I just worked on this lovely rat this week and she's for sale on my etsy shop. She was really fun to make because I wanted to make her really cute, opposite of what a rat really is, if you're not a rat person. I'm not sure what I'm going to make next...maybe my cat. I'll be sure to post it up on here for you all to see.

Geeky Crafts

I was looking around on etsy.com last night and came across a bunch of different, cool, geeky crafts to buy. These would be great for your desk at work or home and a great gift for a tech geek. If you have some old floppy discs that you don't use anymore these would make for a great craft project. Looks like all you need for the pencil holder are 5 floppys and some zip ties. Binder rings and paper for the floppy disc note book. I love the hard drive clock it is such a great idea, it would definitely be a conversation piece. There are a bunch of other really creative handmade items on etsy.com you are bound to find something you'll love.

Monogram Tie

I found this really cool tutorial just in time for father's day to create a monogram tie on Monogram Momma's blog. I've never embroidered anything before and wasn't familiar with the embroidery chain stitch but I found this tutorial on youtube and it is very simple!

Poppytalkhandmade

I found a great place to buy and sell handmade goods Poppytalkhandmade. It's almost set up like etsy.com where you have your own shop. They have opportunities for monthly themed submissions, I'm not sure how much it costs to put your work up there, but the site mentions that the Oct 07 price was $60 for the month. Here is a link to the upcoming submission schedule. It is set up like a virtual farmer's market. I think this is another great way to get your work seen by other people around the world. It's great that there are more and more websites like this, the online handmade community seems to be growing.

Lego Mosaic

I found this great tutorial on ascentstage.com that shows you how to create a lego mosaic from your favorite photographs. All you need is Photoshop and some Legos. It is very simple to create the grid from your photograph in Photoshop. If you want to create your own one of a kind mosaic you don't need Photoshop to make a grid. You can go to the Lego store and order individual building bricks.

Sok-0 Animals

I found these really cute handmade sock animals on Sok-O. These stuffed animals are so cute and creative. They seem like they would be fun to make. Some are made with just one sock and others are made with more like this pig.

My Own Creation: Amigurumi Lion

Check out my latest amigurumi stuffed animal creation. This little lion took me two full days to crochet. I originally made one for my friend's baby shower present and decided to make another. Everyone loved it at the baby shower and couldn't believe that I made it. I decided to try out etsy.com and put it up there for sale.

Mosaic Flower Pot

I found a really cool video tutorial on how to create these neat looking mosaic flower pots. You can find it here on the Curbly blog, they were created by the DIY Maven. It seems fairly easy to do and you can be creative with it. Last time I went to the beach I collected tons of shells and brought them home thinking I could use them in a craft project...I think I'll use them in this one.

Tote Bag

I found a great crochet pattern for this tote bag on the Dances With Wools blog. This looks like it would be a great bag to bring with you to the grocery store if you have to pick up a few things or to take to the beach to hold a few towels and sunscreen. Here is a link to the pdf pattern.