Cheap Crafting

NAME: Z
STATUS: Crafty
GOAL: Starting on holiday craft gifts
PEEVE: Adhesive failure
GLEE: Making cool stuff with little coin

One of our closets is piled with bins of unfinished craft projects, fabric, notions, buttons, cookie tins, beads, old vintage jewelry, broken pieces of jewelry and broken plates, cups and other ceramic pieces for when I finally make those mosaic garden decorations I’ve been planning.

When it comes to crafting, I’ve got no shortage of ideas. The problem is always time.

But I’ll make the time to find or create a good deal. Simply going to the craft store for supplies is boring. Where’s the challenge in that? Thrift stores, yard sales and even your own attic and closets may have more raw material than you think – and the price is right.

All those single dangly earrings you’ve saved after losing the other one? Use one or more as pendants or assemble a collection and decorate a small lampshade for a one-of-a-kind gift. Chunky vintage earrings, with the clips removed, make adorable refrigerator magnets. Just buy a stack of magnets and some good glue and have at it!

Cookie tins transform into unique keepsake boxes with some spray paint and imagination. I’ve used old beads, broken necklaces, odd broaches with the pins missing and some decorative trim. Felt is an inexpensive way to create a custom lining for the inside. Or buy an inexpensive remnant of something fuzzy and unique. One year for the holidays I made boxes for all our nieces, painted the color of their rooms and decorated with their styles in mind. They were a huge hit.

Beat up or unattractive hat boxes from yard sales or thrift stores get a second chance with some nice fabric, spray glue and trim. Groovy vintage fabric pieces make great wall art – just use iron-on backing to stiffen them up and find frames you like. Oh, and cheap frames from thrift stores and discount shops are blank slates for decorating, by color of theme or event. I’ve done colored buttons for kids’ rooms, different sized fake pearls after a quick wash of sparkly paint and even wood beads and odd pieces for that rustic look.

Have your friends over and tell them to bring their junk boxes (we all have them, don’t deny it) and swap trinkets and ideas. Clean off the dining room table and have a crafting night, hot glue guns ready to rumble.

Buttons have endless applications – magnets, pins, flowers or, if you tend to the obsessive and buy way too many jars from collectible shops, folk art for your home or the walls of someone you love. My only recommendation is to start with a smaller piece of fabric than I did. It takes a lot of buttons and time to fill an 18-inch square.

Check out Ms. Cheap’s collection of free summer fun!

All the above information has been reviewed by this week’s expert.