Nifty But Thrifty

Meet Paul

Paul is on a tiny 4-by-5-inch canvas, made of clippings from a children's encyclopedia and a science and behavior book. Meet him in person at Artpool.

See spot, peck

The background text on this one is about an experiment involving a pigeon in a box pecking at a spot for food.

I heart micro-organisms

This one's on a 5-by-5-inch canvas. It's up at Artpool, too.

My goal was to make something crafty with the bottle caps I amass throughout the week. I found some old Life magazines at a thrift store recently, so I cut some tiny pictures from them to use inside the bottle caps. I connected the caps with silver jump rings and just added a chain.

Recycling soda can tabs

This is my first experiment with using soda can tabs to make jewelry. I just connected the tabs with silver jump rings and added a silver clasp at the end.

Full metal jellyfish

I went shopping for wind chimes recently and was horrified to see how much they cost. We're talking $10 to $20 here, people! So I purchased a bag of stray utensils from a thrift store, strung them together with some spare beads, and BAM! A wind chime that looks like a jellyfish!

Awesome wolf-on-wood action!

This beautiful wolf painting is preserved for all time on a slab of tree trunk. All it needed was a caption.

The Blond Bombshells

My friend Emily and I tackled the Great Urban Race last weekend, scouring the city in search of fame and fortune. As part of our costumes (our team was The Blond Bombshells), I constructed turtle shells out of cardboard boxes and felt. They held up well considering we ran around town in them for five hours, cramming into trolleys and competing in soccer and cornhole challenges.

Here's the final look, with instructions below:

I started by cutting an octagon from a cardboard box:

Then I cut two slits on each side:

I shaped the cardboard into a shell, sliding the top flaps underneath the side flaps and taping the whole contraption until it was sturdy:

I then added straps made of spare ribbon and covered the whole shebang in felt:

This photo was taken after the race, so the shell had a few dings by then:

In the end, slow and steady did not win the race, but we definitely had fun!

Easy owl decor

To make this wall art, I just stretched scrap fabric over a canvas, cut owl shapes from felt, and glued them on. It was easy, and it's the perfect type of project for a nursery.

Everybody loves a seahorse

Sometimes the spirit moves you to paint a seahorse, so you do it. Now for a random seahorse fact: The males carry the females' eggs in a little pouch on their tummies until the eggs hatch. Awesome!

Ladybug pillows from vintage fabric

Oliver loves them!

Flying over Yosemite

This beautiful Yosemite print was just lying wasted at the back of Collection Connection, a thrift store on Columbus Drive near 50th Street. I added a silver bird to the sky with metallic paint.

Well worth $12.50

OK, so I don't normally post stuff that's not arts and crafts, but this is both nifty and thrifty, so I feel it's pertinent. I found this super swift record player cabinet at a thrift store on Armenia Avenue just north of Hillsborough. It cost $12.50, which coincidentally was the same price the man in front of me paid for an old bathtub. Good deals at that store :)

Bam! The doors swing out to be speakers!

The record player folds out from one side. The other side holds records.

Feathers for your hair

I really enjoy the feather hair clips that look as if they could have been decoration on an old hat. So I decided to experiment.

Supplies: metal hair clips, felt, feathers, fake flowers, decorative patches, hot glue

Instructions: Cut a felt oval to serve as the base for your first piece. Glue the oval to the flat side of a hair clip, making sure you don't glue the clip shut. When the base has dried, glue feathers to the felt and add a decorative patch to the tip. Voila!

Glue warning: At first, I was using a special craft glue for metal, but the bubbling that the glue did as it dried did not mix with the feathers. So I switched to a hot glue gun, which worked very well.

I also made a couple of clips with flowers, using felt for the bases:

Tree inside my window

This antiques store near my house had a bunch of old windows for sale, so I figured I'd experiment. This tree is made from tissue paper. In retrospect, it would have been more ironic to do a weeping willow. Maybe next time.

Anyway, my friend Erin is going to display this in her room at at Studio G. Hip-hip hooray!

When it's not back-lit:

I sanded and repainted the front of the frame, but I left the sides alone. I like the rope. :)

Junk mail wreath

I bought this wreath after Christmas last year because it was 219% off or something. The mission: to decorate it without spending money.

I decided to do something with junk mail, so I cut strips from a grocery store mailer:

and rolled them into tight curls:

I let loose the curls and attached them to the wreath by bending the tips of the branches into small hooks:

BAM! Junk mail wreath!

Birds in a tree

These paintings are on some scrap wood I had leftover from another project. The birds and tree branches are painted, and I cut out shapes from magazines to form the birds' wings and the tree leaves. Buttons are used for the birds' eyes. I'll have these at Artpool's holiday arts and crafts show Dec. 19.

Bird friends on a limb: