Blog Archives

Upcycling

Nicola

Great Ideas for Outdoor Crafts

21 July 2015  |  Nicola

Flowers are a great material for garden based crafts

July is a great month to spend in the garden; from the bright sunny days to balmy evenings, there’s plenty of time to get outside and get crafting. From creative ways to label your plants and nostalgic handmade boats, to fancy ways to upcycle the humble stick, we’ve compiled a nice long list of our favourite outdoor crafts from around the web.

Outdoor Fun

Whether you’re looking for ways to enjoy the outdoors, or fancy ways to brighten your garden, mixing found objects with traditional craft supplies means you’re onto a winner. Martha Stewart’s rock dominoes are a great rustic take on an old favourite game; take a trip to the beach or woods to gather the perfect stones, then spend a sunny afternoon painting them up. If you fancy setting sail, we love these handmade boats over at Mini Eco; either gather some ordinary garden sticks or grab some of our handy driftwood sticks, and finish your craft off with a sail made from printed scrapbook paper. The setting sun doesn’t have to mean the end of your adventures in outdoor making; we found these great DIY lanterns made from balloons and paper yarn at Splash of Something – not only are they fun to make, they’re also great to hang from trees and fences to add a little light to your outdoor space.

Sticks

It wasn’t until we started looking into ways to upcycle sticks that we realised just how many uses there were for this garden regular. We saw sticks as homewares, sticks that had been transformed into amazing accessories and sticks made into furniture, but our absolute favourites were the wrapped and painted stick necklaces at Plan B blog. Such a versatile project, you could vary the size and shape, wrapping several together, and then decorate them with acrylic paint and varnish. Our close second favourites were the hundreds of branch and stick hooks we found; the jewellery display branch over on Mojo Made is a great example of beautiful simplicity, but we fell just as much in love with those used for coat racks, large branches to hang saucepans from in the kitchen, and we even found a toilet roll holder fashioned from a stick!  

Plant Markers

If you’re a keen gardener, DIY plant markers are a great make, and can be as plain or decorative as you like. Martha Stewart popped up again with her plain twig markers, which are simple to make in a short space of time and blend in well with the garden, and we found a great tutorial for reusable chalkboard garden markers over at Handmade in the Heartland. For something a bit more colourful, Repeat Crafter Me has a fab DIY for painted rock signs – simply find some good-sized smooth stones and get painting!

Flowers

Summer equals flowers, but there are more creative ways to use beautiful blooms than to just put them in a jug or vase (although we like that idea too!). We love flower garlands, either for a special occasion, or just because they look beautiful; choose more solid types of flower without petals that are too delicate, and then simply thread them onto a length of cotton. If you’re feeling particularly ethereal or you’re crafting with children, flower crowns can be a fun make –we love the simple flower headdress tutorial we found over at A Beautiful Mess – or you could press some bright blooms and then make them into cards, put them in frames or laminate them and make a few beautiful bookmarks. There’s a great DIY over at White Stuff that explains pressing and preserving flowers in a few simple steps. 

Read more...
9 January 2015  |  Nicola
Our Top Ten Upcycling Ideas

Here at StickyTiger, we love all crafts, but there’s something a bit more exciting about making something from nothing; we think that taking an old, tired household object and turning it into something fabulous is pretty satisfying – so to inspire you for the new year, we’ve gathered together our favourite upcycling ideas which take anything from a couple of hours to a few days.

Read more...
5 January 2015  |  Nicola
Great Ideas to Upcycle Christmas Cards

Old cards are perfect for upcycling and turning into other fab festive projects – we’ve found a few of our favourite ideas around the internet and have created an inspirational roundup to help you use up your stash.

Read more...
StickyTiger craft supplies
You have 0 items - Total: £0.00