Giveaway Winners & Thanksgiving Crafts

Congratulations to Amber/Rayne and Kenyetta. Since there were only 2 entries, I'll be sending the Seasonique case that's ready now to Amber/Rayne and Kenyetta will get the one that'll be ready in a 2 months.

Thanks for playing, ladies.

Stay tuned for more frugal crafts, including more using excessive pharmaceutical packaging.

Mini-Photo Album and a Giveaway

One of my biggest pet peeves, and a large motivation in starting Frugal Crafters is how much plastic we're bombarded with that can't be or just isn't recycled. My biggest annoyance comes from the pharmaceutical industry. Now, I know that they want my pills to get to me undamaged, but I wish they'd give a thought to how much they're making me add to landfill. 

I used to be on monthly birth control pills, the kind that come in a plastic case with a dial in the middle. The pills themselves came in a foil pack that could be snapped in and removed when it was done. Yet, I was given a new pink plastic case almost every single month. Sometimes I was able to give it back to the pharmacist successfully, but if they had placed the prescription sticker on the plastic, they made me take it even though they could've easily removed the sticker and put it on the foil pack like they did other times.

And so years passed and I threw away a lot of plastic and my doctor put me on the pills where you get your period only 4 times a year. They come in cases with 3 months of pills. They look like this:

To me it looked like a little book. So when I finished up one case, I turned it into a little photo album. 

I made a photo album from my birth control pill case.

Oh, yes I did.

First, a closer look at  the pages.

So one side could have a picture slid into it and the other side had some flat spots where I could glue a picture. Add the inside front and back covers, and that means 8 pictures.

I popped out the foil packs and threw them away. I also gave the case a good cleaning since it had been sitting on my bathroom sink for 3 months.

Next, the pictures. I decided to use some photos of food from my honeymoon. My husband and I roll that way--looking at these pictures makes us sigh with the memories.  Besides, my mom didn't go to all the trouble of finding the perfect mother-of-the-bride dress just to have a photo of her wearing it end up inside a former birth control pill case. 

After selecting the pictures, I edited them online at picnik.com. I cropped them and re-sized them. To figure out the correct size, I went to auctionrepair.com to see how many pixels big my picture should be to print out the correct dimensions. (I used the default option of 75 dpi on the page when converting.)

I pasted the pictures into an MS Word document, so that I could get as many on each page as possible to minimize the amount of wasted photo paper.

I printed, trimmed and either popped or glued the photos in place. The glue soaked through the photo paper I used, so I'd suggest using double-sided tape instead.

Ta-dah!





And now the giveaway. I have another empty case ready to be turned into another photo album and I'll be sending it to one lucky winner. Just leave a comment to enter. I'll draw a name on Wednesday, November 19 at noon, EST. 

You could make a fun little album for yourself, or how about a photo album for a child with pictures of relatives? Or an ABC book or counting book for a child? Any other suggestions?

Felted Sweaters

tongfengdemao commented on my post about recycled yarn with this:
Do you know if this will work on a sweater that shrank? I have a cardigan I loved and it shrank and I bet there'd be enough yarn to make a vest that fits.

Unfortunately, the answer to this question is No. When a wool sweater (or any knitted item) shrinks in the wash, the individual fibers get matted together and become impossible to pull apart without ripping.

This doesn't mean that a shrunken sweater is garbage. If you don't know anyone small enough to wear it, you could buy an inexpensive teddy bear or doll, dress them in the shrunken sweater and you have a gift.

Or you could cut big squares out of the front and back and stitch them together to make a pillow. Repeat with the sleeves for a smaller pillow.

Ellen of the long thread has done several recycled crafts, including some that involve shrunken sweaters (scroll down). two kitties has quite a few felted sweater projects.

Google "felted sweater" and you'll get tons more ideas.

Any other suggestions?

Recycled Yarn

I have several projects of my own in store for you as soon as I can get my act together. In the meantime, here's a link to one of the basics.

Maybe you've unraveled a store-bought sweater to re-use the yarn. Maybe you've heard that such a thing could be done, but had no idea how. Ashley of Nouveau Fiber Arts has an excellent tutorial on how to unravel a sweater to recycle the yarn. I followed it myself to turn an XXL Ralph Lauren men's sweater into yarn, which I then turned into a cream-colored cardigan for the office. I got the original sweater at The Salvation Army and I call the sweater I made my $4 sweater. I have several others waiting for the recycling treatment. 

Ashley is having a sale on wool roving and locks and recycled yarn right now, so even if you don't want to do any yarn recycling yourself, go visit her and do a little discount shopping.

Whether you need yarn for knitting, crochet, weaving or children's art projects, recycling yarn is a great and frugal way to increase your yarn stash. 

Thanks, Ashley, for a great tutorial!

Rocky Doormat

Sara, of Handy Crafts did a fabulous, expensive looking doormat out of a rubber doormat, river rocks, ad rubber cement, all for $12. She credits Curbly.com for the inspiration.

Go visit Sara and admire her handiwork.

As always, if you try this yourself, be sure to share a picture.

I wonder how this would work with the bag of mosaic tile I've had for the past decade but never did anything with.

Gift Stash?

Since I posted about this subject on my other blog, I thought I'd ask the question here.

The question?

Do you have a gift stash?

I'm asking mostly to figure out if I should start one of my own.

If you're not familiar with the concept, a gift stash works like this. Say, you're a knitter and you see a pattern for a hat you'd like to make. You find the yarn for it in your yarn stash and knit the hat. But you don't need a new hat and you're not sure who you'd give it to. So you put it in the gift stash and when you need to give someone a gift, you can check the gift stash before going shopping, or knitting something especially for the recipient.

With other crafts, especially frugal crafts, you might say to yourself, "hey, I could make a whatsit out of these thingies here that I was just going to throw out." If you don't have an immediate need for a whatsit, then you can put it in the gift stash. I suspect that if you don't have a gift stash, you'd just give up and throw out the thingies instead of using them to make something.

So a gift stash can be extra frugal because it would keep you from having to buy gifts when you've already made something suitable. It also means that you can make that whatsit, or hat, or arigurumi toy without any time pressure. That time pressure can turn into finishing a two year old's birthday present several months late. (Yes, there's an unfinished pillow sitting on my coffee table. Why do you ask?)

So, do you have a gift stash?

Patch Job

If it's a crafty way to be frugal, is it also a frugal craft? I'll save the contemplation of such weighty matters until I've had a little more coffee.

Hadley, of Hadley Gets Crafty had posted a tutorial for patching up jeans and cutoffs. Check out the last picture. Her shorts don't look patched, they looked embellished!

I suppose you could even take it further by continuing the stitching all over.

As always, be sure to share pictures if you try this yourself.