DIY Life

There is nothing sweeter than a child, arms spread wide, exclaiming "I love you this much!" Sure, it's a little cliche, but it melts my heart every time. This week's Kiddie Craft captures that precious exclamation, their adorable hand-prints, and their complete admiration for Mom or Grandma.

So, skip the Mother's Day display in your local stationery store, and help your children make her a personal card. Here's what you need:

• Construction paper
• Scissors
• Tape or glue
• Pencil
• A large sheet of paper
• Pens, paints, stickers and other things to decorate the card

This simple Mother's Day card was easy to make, and my boys had a blast spreading their arms wide on the paper, and giggling as I traced their tiny hands. Follow me through the break for full instructions, and take a look through the gallery for your visual step-by-step.

These simple homemade cards add a personal touch to any gift or greeting. In fact, packaging a variety of them in a box or simply tied with a ribbon makes a great gift in and of itself. You'll need the following materials:

• Card stock. Soft pastels, cream, or even black work well.
• Paper cutter. While scissors would work, a paper cutter helps you get a perfect edge.
• Fabric. This a great project to use up scraps of fabric. You'll need a green for the foliage, yellow or orange for the center of the flowers, and a variety of colors for the petals. For added interest, opt for subtle tone-on-tone patterns or mottled fabrics; solid colors tend to look flat and lifeless on the cards.
• Glue stick. Make sure to choose a glue stick that works with fabric and paper.
• Fabric scissors. Sharp scissors with a fine point (such as scissors made for quilters) work best.

I'll discuss how to make your greeting cards bloom after the break. You can follow along step-by-step in the gallery.

With so many occasions, and such crafty kids, I often wonder if the little gifts we give end up becoming more clutter, collecting dust at Grandma's house. For this week's Kiddie Craft, we set out to make a creative Mother's Day gift that is personal and unique, but also useful.

We're making fingerprint stationery. Grab some plain card-stock, envelopes, a colorful ink-pad, and your little one's precious fingers. Press their small fingerprints into pictures on the card-stock. Finish them off with a decorative ribbon, and you will have created a memorable Mother's Day gift. You won't see a washcloth in the materials image, because somehow I neglected to predict this oh-so-necessary item, but trust me, you'll need one!

You can check out the finished cards in the gallery. After the break I'll walk you through the flower, rainbow, and hand-print designs. Use those ideas, or take a little inspiration from our craft and come up with ideas of your own.

Instructables does it again with a fun, yet easy to make, Valentine's Day gift idea: a gum-dispensing V-Day card. Full instructions and step-by-step photos are on the site, but the basic concept involves 1) making little Valentine's Day cards from suitably colored/decorated craft paper, 2) making slightly bigger "envelopes" from folded and glued or taped craft card stock, and 3) pasting the first, smaller, cards onto the larger envelope. Finally, the coup de grace: a red ribbon is threaded through punched holes and artfully tied so that, when pulled by the giftee, it "dispenses" a pack of gum placed inside the envelope.

I don't really get the gum-Valentine's Day connection. Wouldn't it make more sense for it to dispense a small pack of pink or red candy, like M&Ms perhaps? Still, there's lots to like about this nifty little project. For one thing, it's an ideal project for kids. It's one of those rainy day ideas that will both keep them busy and (hopefully) result in a stack of gift cards that can be handed out to friends, school teachers and the like. Second, it's inexpensive, which is always a good thing in a craft project. (Hello! I'm looking at you, scrap-booking!)

Recently, we talked about screen printing: the versatile medium in which you can create anything from a simple t-shirt to a complex, multi-layered fine art print. Screen printing is easy, if you pay attention to detail, but people sometimes avoid it just because it can take up an inconvenient amount of space.

Another way you can screen print at home is with a small machine called a Print Gocco (pronounced go-co, not gah-co). It's made only by a single company, Japan's RISO, and uses proprietary supplies. It's compact enough to use in even a very small apartment, so it's a great solution for people with limited space... as long as you don't mind that it makes small prints.

Over the last few years, Print Gocco has become one of the most talked-about tool for artists and crafters. You can join me after the break to read more about it!

Do you have a few Hanukkah cards to get out? If you do, and you're feeling crafty, then these embossed cards are the perfect project for you. The images are stenciled in metal or vellum. You could choose one method, or do the front of the card in metal and a velum overlay inside.

Hanukkah themed stencils are plentiful and there are some beautiful designs to choose from. The Star of David and Menorah are some traditional symbols, but you could choose a 'Happy Hanukkah' stencil or a floral print too.

This great craft from HGTV has all the instructions with illustrated steps and helpful tips. These cards will sit on mantels for months after Hanukkah. You might not have much time, but if you can make a few moments for this, your friends and family are sure to be impressed.

Sure you could download images, type a greeting, and print a card faster than you can say DIY, but where's the fun in that? If you really want to use your hands to create DIY cards with a more personal touch, check out these options:

CraftyPod has a podcast with ideas for making greeting cards from fabric, yarn, and other miscellaneous materials.

Craft Apple has a tutorial for patchwork cards. All you need is a handful of fabric scraps and some sewing supplies.

While you're at it, check out this tutorial for sewing on paper from Julie at the adventures of bluegirlxo. Lots of great ides for embellishing mixed media cards too.

The DIY Network has directions for making 3-dimensional window cards. These are really neat accordion style cards that people will actually want to put on their mantels.

Just last week, our own Brian White pointed us to instructions for making eco-Christmas cards from shredded junk mail.

Last, but by no means least, Curbly user erinloechner has a new tutorial for a Christmas Tree Pop-Up Card that is nothing short of awesome.

Here's to putting the "hand" back into "handmade"!

Before you know it, Thanksgiving will be over and it will be time to send out Christmas cards to family, friends, and acquaintances. Making our own Christmas cards is a tradition I want to start with my youngest daughter, and it will be made easier with these instructions from wikiHow.

To make the Christmas tree pop-up card, you will need heavy card stock or construction paper, a ruler, a paper clip, a pair of scissors, and some art supplies to decorate your finished card. WikiHow gives you step-by-step instructions on how to construct the card, including the pattern for the tree.

I think this would be an ideal project for youngsters in school to give to their parents for Christmas. The art teacher could print out the paper, have the kids cut and decorate the card, and then make a fancy envelope to put their decorated card in. I know that I would have a happy heart if my little girl gave me this card for Christmas. How about you?

The PopSci guys take on a fun little project with this musical stash for your cash. They turn an Altioid box and a musical card into a theft-detering money box. I'm not sure why exactly you'd need this, hopefully it's not because your coworkers are actually stealing from you the way these guys suggest! Still, you could hide anything in there and the musical alarm would let you know if somebody was breaking into your tin. Personally, I don't want a silly song playing every time you go to pay for coffee, but I could find other uses for it I'm sure. It's a simple, clever idea. It's not hugely practical, but it only takes 5 min to put together and it could be fun setting somebody up.

Yeah, we all know that the all-powerful iPod, which Apple has turned into a perpetual cash machine, gives many of us our portable music fix just about anywhere we are, from the car to the treadmill, but if you're into solutions that you build yourself, and are handy with electronic parts, why not build your own MP3 player?

Many folks I know use their MP3 players to listen to news podcasts and music collections in their cars only. Do you need iPod fashion in your vehicle? Maybe not, an that is where a self-built MP3 digital audio player could be useful. Now that SD memory cards are insanely cheap (2GB cards go for under $20), what's keeping you from building your own MP3 hack job?

With a microcontroller chip, a power source (preferably a Lithium-Ion battery), a storage module (like an SD card), a small color display (like from a 2005-era cellphone) and a few assorted chips (like a MP3 decoding chip and amp circuit), you too can have your own MP3 player from scratch. Now, this is the type of solution that may take some skills in the areas of schematics reading and directions, but if you're not willing to depart with two benjamins for that latest iPod nano, break out your electrostatic gloves and get busy here.

Singer/fashionista Gwen Stefani recently signed a promotional deal with Hewlett-Packard: she's the new spokesperson for their printers, so they've made some "Gwen's Style For You" printable downloads available on the HP site. If you use Vox, or certain other Internet services, you may already be aware of this: it's been heavily promoted in a few places. (Incidentally, this is not Stefani's first deal with HP -- back in 2005, she designed a limited edition camera for the company.)

But have you actually gone and looked at HP's page of "Gwen downloads"? The printables aren't pics of Gwen; they're much more interesting than just another photo of a pop star. Instead, they are illustrations and designs reminiscent of some of her fashion brands, particularly Harajuku Lovers. I don't think she precisely did the art with her own two hands, but she did commission and endorse it. And it's pretty cool!

Have you ever been on your way to a party, then realized that you didn't have a card or a gift box for the gift you'd planned to take? Are you getting married, and want to make your own invitations? As long as you have printer-ready card stock, a craft knife, and a bone scorer/folder around the house, you're covered.

Ruth Ann Zaroff's Mirkwood Designs is a site that was once known for its excellent hand-carved rubber stamps (no longer made), but is currently known for its wide variety of printable card, box, and envelope templates.

Among the 50+ templates you'll find: the center-tie card shown above, a heart card, a butterfly card, a paper doll, a trapezoid box, a library card book pocket, faux postage, a milk carton box, a take-out box, a mug card, and much more. Instructions for using each template are included. Most projects can be completed in under half an hour.

Everyone these days has a digital camera, and every digital camera has a memory card of some kind, which are insanely small, hold a ton of pictures, and are way too easy to lose. SD-cards (Secure Digital) are one of the most popular and widely uses memory-card formats, available in mp3 players, camcorders, phones, cameras, and handheld devices.

Chances are you will have a few of these things floating around the house, so wouldn't it be nice to have some way to store them and have them with you if needed? Instructables features a project to make a simple wallet-card that will hold your memory cards in place and store them for travel.

SD is not the only card you can use with this, you can cut it to be any type of cards you like, and most of them will be thin enough to fit in your wallet. Check it out!

[via LifeHacker]