Great Craft Ideas - Jewelry Candles Baskets

There are hundreds of great craft ideas for both children and adults. Whatever you like to do or make everything is possible. Craft boxes are a great place to start your craft career. You can start by making a wonderful decorative box to store all your tools or cards, paints, pencils or scissors. Make whatever size that takes your fancy and that is useful for you. You may want to start with a shoe box from your local shoe store that you can decorate in many wonderful ways. Wooden blank boxes are also available and can be beautifully decorated.

It is always a good idea to have a theme, a colour or a fabric may inspire you. What are you storing in the box? Use that as a starting point for your decoration. Craft books are a great source of inspiration and are freely available in your local library. Coloured craft paper can be cut into shapes and stuck onto your box. Screen print on old wallpaper or paint a picture, buttons, fabric scraps, ribbons, seashells, small pebbles, and little plastic toys can be glued onto your box, photographs are another idea and newspaper clippings for a look that will age gracefully. Everything is possible, no matter what medium you choose, for example see the copper bowl I made below after I had completed a metal work training session. I had initially enroled for rug making!

Where to start

Often a good place to start a craft is to look at the seasons. Are there any celebrations imminent? Christmas is a great time to make homemade decorations to trim your tree. Look at wonderfully scented dried oranges tied with natural raffia and hung with cinnamon sticks. Make your own wreath for your door the homemade ones are always the best. Use willow sticks or ‘Sallies’ for the base of the wreath and decorate with greenery like ivy, holly, yew cuttings, berries, nuts, seed heads from the garden with a little gold spray paint or fake snow. Teasels, fir cones, ribbons and small baubles can all be used with wonderful effect.

Easter is a time for flowers and Easter bonnets, party cakes that can be decorated with fresh or dried flowers or little eggs of marzipan. Screen print Easter table mats onto fabric rectangles. Use an old picture frame and stretch some fine printing mesh across it tightly, cut a newspaper stencil of flowers or rabbits or eggs and print the image using a window squeegee to draw the ink over the screen and onto the table mat. Fray the edges to create a finished look and use on your Easter Sunday table.

Birthday ideas are another point to start a craft, kids love to make cards and if you want to keep them occupied for an afternoon they will happily sit at a table with a pile of old magazines to cut up, glue and glitter to spread about and a few coloured markers with which to draw wonderful pictures. Lots of encouragement and a little attention will be rewarded with some memorable cards.

Arts and Craft

Decoupage is the art of cutting perfectly around colourful pictures and sticking them onto book covers, lampshades, screens, boxes or table tops to make a wonderful collage of images. Cover with several layers of clear varnish for a hard wearing finish. You may also like to buy sheets of decoupage pictures, some of which are already cut out ready for you to stick. These are often copies of antique originals that would have been used by ladies in the past.

Craft training from a young age

Arts and Craft may start as early as pre-school, when your kids get to play with dough and paint, paper and glue. It may be carried on through their lives by enrolling them in after school classes or art camps during the school vacations. Opportunities abound for you to have the chance to learn new and exciting craft ideas.