Handmade Craft Ideas That Reuse Household Items

iscovering the pleasures of a handmade life was a longtime dream for urban homesteader Jenna Woginrich. At 24 years old, living in an apartment in Knoxville, Tennessee, and working as a computer designer, Woginrich was nurturing her dream of learning to homestead. Now, at 27, she’s settled on a rented farm in rural Vermont, where she cares for two working sled dogs, chickens, a flock of sheep, honeybees, a couple of geese, fluffy Angora rabbits, and a backyard garden that provides much of her own food. Part memoir and part how-to manual, Made from Scratch recounts Woginrich’s growing independence and the successes and missteps she experiences as she learns to more fully live off the land. By turns upbeat, dramatic, and sometimes sorrowful, her story embodies the experience of the new homesteader one who is committed to reducing dependence on commercially produced goods while still working a day job to pay the rent. Woven into the narrative, readers will find easy-to-follow instructions for making clothing, playing a musical instrument, preserving fruit, brewing the best pot of coffee imaginable, and much more. Now available in paperback, this new edition features additional material on moving from Idaho to Vermont, a topic that will delight fans of her blog.

What better way to encourage children to be creative than with fun ideas for traditional crafts using natural, recycled, and found materials? "Green Crafts for Children" by Emma Hardy has four chapters, each focusing on a different organic craft. The Salt Dough chapter shows how simple it is to mix flour, water and salt to design beads, decorations, and homemade colored play dough. The Paper chapter has decoupage and papier-mache ideas to make bowls, a dollhouse, and masks that kids will love to paint. Natural Treasures makes use of everyday items such as shells, pine cones, and stones, and transforms them into boats, animals, and even a board game. Finally, in the Fabric and Wool chapter, use up fabric scraps or old clothes to design glove creatures and create your own felt and friendship bracelets

Nothing conveys a feeling of warmth and comfort like the traditional art of patchwork. This book brings patchwork into the twenty-first century with a treasury of projects you can make that are bold, bright, and innovative—yet just as homey and warm as traditional patchwork. The thirty-four projects presented in this book explore the techniques of patchwork sewing, appliqué, and machine quilting and include pouches and handbags, quilts and pillow cases, tissue cases and pot holders, all with a distinctive Scandinavian flair