Where Reducers are Producers

Main Navigation

Upcycling | Crafts | Recycled Art
101 Easy Craft Project Ideas

Discover how to make easy craft projects, save time and spend quality time with your loved ones.

The Eve of Reduction promotes art therapy through crafts. If you are looking for a fun, engaging activity to bolster self esteem and self worth and even to just relax, crafts are where it's at!
Check out 101 Easy Craft Project Ideas ($34.95). Right now, they're throwing in a bunch of bonuses, including:
• How You Can Make Money from Your Crafts
• How to Learn to Crochet - and make items that will sell like hotcakes
Check it out Click Here!
Are You Ready to
Start a Craft Business?


If you want to generate income from your skills but don't want to get lost on sites like Etsy, you will need to adopt a strong business model to bring your products or service to the public.
Business models create lead generating systems, partnerships and purchase incentives.
Model Rocket: How to Expand your Business Model and Blast Off the Ground ($19.99) is a solid e-book presenting examples of businesses and authors' creative business models. This book is a necessary guide to entrepreneurial success, especially in the highly competitive craft sector. To learn more click here.

If you're ready to venture out into the craft show scene, you've gotta check out Craft Show Success Secrets.
It will save you serious money. It will also help you know how to price your work which can make or break you right there.
Click Here!
 


BeadRoom.com
Playing with Matches
a Patriotic Project
Here's an easy project to do for the fourth of July holiday. Make a patriotic table arrangement using stick matches. Then as you use the matches for lighting citronella candles or sparklers, you can return the unused portion to you star spangled decoration.

Supplies needed:
Long, wooden stick matches
Paints
Star stickers
Paint brush
Baby food jar
Colored sand (optional)

Apply star stickers around 2-4 match sticks.
Paint those sticks blue, let dry.
Then remove star stickers to expose raw wood underneath.
Next, take the remaining matches and paint two alternating sides of the match red. This will give the effect of the red and white flag bars.
Fan out the decorative matches in a baby food jar ( or some other small jar from the recycling bin).
If you want, fill the bottom half of the jar with red,white or blue sand.

Here's to the land of the free!


Upcycled Back Scratcher
This is a great, earth-friendly project to do with kids, with very little cost needed for supplies.
Supplies:
Wood Paint Stirrer or Ruler
Drill (optional)
Craft Paint
Alphabet Stickers (optional)
2 Plastic Caps (like those from a water bottle or an orange juice carton)
Glue
Ribbon

Step 1: Optional
If you want to hang your back scratcher when it’s finished, drill a small hole in the lower part of the handle. (When you’re all done with the project, add a ribbon through the hole)

Step 2: Paint the handle
I used acrylic paint, masking tape and alphabet stickers to decoratively paint the handle.

Step 3:
Glue the plastic caps to the top end of the paint stirrer (Opposite end from the drill hole). Use Gorilla glue or Krazy glue to be sure it attaches securely. You may need to roughen up the plastic caps to get the glue to work optimally.
I added pictures of my kids to the inside of the caps. If you do this, be sure to position the pictures so they are upside-right when the scratcher is hanging.



Butterfly Garden
made from a wine bottle and kitchen tile
Butterflies drink from small recesses of water so I used the punt of an upside down wine bottle to give them a place to drink. To attract them, I put flowers in the bottle. My flowers are made of rolled up magazine paper (for the stem) and buttons and fabric for the flower part. Remember, the flower has to be stuffed through the neck of the wine bottle so don't make it out of something too big or something that will get crushed.

Another thing butterflies like is a place to rest. A butterfly blog I read suggested a smooth stone. I didn't have one of those so I used a left over kitchen tile that was sitting in my basement. I painted it and set it out next to my wine bottle.

Wind Chime made from a Broken Umbrella
A couple months ago I was telling my recycle artist group about a woman who makes doggie rain coats out of broken umbrella fabric. A woman in the group asked what the metal parts of the umbrella were used for and I didn't have an answer.

Fast forward a month and I see an mangled umbrella in the street. Naturally, I get out and get it, ready for a challenge.

So I decided to make a wind chime out of its parts.

Here's what I used: assorted beads, a large paper clip, nylon thread, scissors and needle-nose pliers (shocking, no hot glue!)

To start, straighten out the paper clip and bend in the tip of one end so the beads and umbrella danglers don't slide off.

Thread on a dangler followed by 5-8 beads and repeat.

Bend the beaded paperclip into a circle and bend the tip of the other end so it can hook into the other bent end.

Now add three nylon strings, attached equally spaced around the circle. Bead the nylon string and knot them together in the center. You can either make a loop at the top with the extra string or add something like a key chain loop to use to hang your wind chimes.
 


Upcycled Tea Box
Made from an old book and an antique knob latch
Last week, I visited Buffalo Reuse for the first time. No, I'm not involved in any reconstruction projects so I puttered around taking it all in. I did have in the back of my mind that I wanted to make another tea box. So, I picked up a couple non-functioning, antique knob latches. I only needed one but for $1/ea. I had to get a second one.







I made tea box awhile back from a wooden box I garbage picked. I added some fabric and a knob to the top and used foam core to make dividers on the inside.
Since I didn't have another, perfect box I was thinking of using a shoe box, but that would be flimsy paired with the substantial antique latch knob.

So I went on Google images, a great source of inspiration for me, and searched tea boxes. Most were boring, until several pages in, I saw a fancy tea box that looked like a book. My idea was complete.  I was going to take a nod from The Shawshank Redemption and cut recesses into the book pages to house my tea bags: a hole for regular and a hole for decaf. I added the knob to the leather bound book cover and was thankful I didn't need to source a hinge for my totally upcycled tea box.



HOW TO MAKE A CUSTOM T-SHIRT AT HOME

PROJECT ALERT:
AWESOME UPCYCLED BRAIDED
EASTER EGG DECORATION
Reusable Bag
that Stuffs Into a Carrot Shape
Content copyright . Eve of Reduction. All rights reserved. Site Meter