Creativity on a Budget: Making Your Own Crafts

If you're looking for a new hobby, something for the kids to do while they're out of school, or ways to creatively decorate your home, you'll probably be interested in crafts. Crafts are not just your regular Popsicle-stick cabins or paper-bag puppets anymore, although those are classics, and will always be fun to make. From summer camp to shabby chic, you can use crafts to get just the feel and fun you want for a room, piece of furniture, or for playtime.

Crafts are so creative and fun to make because they require household items that are common under normal circumstances, but can be transformed into something totally different. Crafts can be very sophisticated, like elaborate handmade flower arrangements; functional, like handbags or jewelry boxes; or just plain fun, like puppets or dolls. Making crafts is also a great way to spend time with family and friends. Crafts can be used for educational purposes, and teachers are always incorporating them into lesson plans. Here are some ideas for how to organize crafts, and some suggestions for how to make your crafts the most presentable:

Create a theme
If you're teaching a certain time in history or cultural tradition, you can definitely incorporate crafts into your lesson plan. There are so many options when you're making theme-oriented crafts, your class will have fun with the project, and will probably be more likely to remember the lesson because they can participate with hands-on activities. You can make flags to represent certain countries, or modes of transportation from a particular time period. You can also make puppets and �dress' them in traditional costumes pertaining to different cultures you may be teaching.

Make sure the students can be creative
Depending on the age of the kids, let them do as much of the crafts as possible by themselves. This will deepen the impression of the lesson and create a fun learning environment.Many daycare centers and neighborhood recreation centers provide special crafts for children during the summer to give them a way to spend their free time while they're out of school (their parents could also use a break).

Here are some great ideas for summer crafts that your kids will enjoy and you might have a good time with them, too:

Vacation memory book
With colored paper, glue or stapes, string, and photos, you can create a scrapbook for all your summer memories. Encourage your kids to make their crafts personal, with original covers and representations of their favorite hobbies throughout the book. Children can carry this book with them during the summer, along with a disposable camera, to document all their summer adventures.

Paper gardens
Use paper plates and Popsicle sticks to make the artwork for these crafts. You should use construction paper for all the different colors you'll need. Your garden will need flowers, perhaps vegetables, grass, and of course, the sun. Kids can make petals for the flowers from the papers and use the sticks as stems. You can do the same for the sun, and cut green strips for the grass. If you want to put �vegetables' in your garden, you can use the correct paper color and prop up your produce with sticks. You can frame your creation as 3-D art, or use it as a backdrop for a summer puppet show.

Paper bag puppets
You can create puppets from small lunch-size paper bags with any accessories you like. You can use beads, feathers, eyes' (you can buy them at a craft store), and hair' - you can use anything from mop strings to yarn, or anything else you come up with. Just be creative! You can use these crafts in conjunction with other things you may have already made, such as curtains for a puppet play, or other crafts you can use for the �set' of the play, such as small furniture and portraits.

Any of these crafts are easy to make, and there are tons of other ideas. Reading about these projects may help you to think of something original, and you can always put your own spin on any crafts you create. Whatever crafts you decide to try out, no matter what the occasion, remember the most important supply - fun!