Frugal and Recycled Crafts

Are you looking for frugal and recycled arts and crafts projects? If so, you'll like this collection of recycled materials crafting resources featuring how-to articles, free project ideas, and other frugally-crafting fun.

Featured Articles & Project Ideas

Innovative Wire Sculpture for Grades 2-12
By Elizabeth Berrien
This lesson plan by Elizabeth Berrien, one of the world's foremost contemporary wire sculptors, will help children and teens learn how to create their own innovative wire sculpture art like a professional. Includes basic wire sculpture how-to, tools, safety, materials, and cost-saving recycling tips.

Crafting — A Frugal Pastime
By Cynthia Roberts
Crafting is a part of most frugal people's lives. In today's busy world, crafting not only offers a way to exercise our creativity, it is a constructive way to wind down — a way to use leisure time to its greatest advantage.

Alexandromeda Futuristic Arts
See how the artist Alexander creates one-of-a-kind works of art from recycled computer and electronic parts.

Frugal and Recycled Crafting Resources

Imagination Factory
Teaching children and their caregivers creative ways to recycle by making art. Lots of activities and lessons for art history and craft projects.

Frugal Living at About.com
A solid community source for frugal living for crafts and hobbies! Plenty of do-it-yourself articles and projects, crafty savings, how to save money, sewing cheap, and recycling clothes and items into crafts.

Mountain Laurel's Mountain Crafts
Unique crafting ideas using old-time materials and methods. "Mountain people have always made up in ingenuity and creativity what they lacked in money. They have been able to create what they needed from materials available, and no matter how utilitarian the item, it was and is usually turned out with an artistic touch." Woodcarving, quilting, home made dolls, and articles about mountain people.

Spotlight

Kids at Art: The Imagination Factory

Visitors to the Imagination Factory learn how to make art using easy to obtain solid waste as a source of free materials.

Some of the activities include drawing, painting, sculpture, collage, papier-maché, marbling and crafts. The site features Trashasaurus Rex (pictured), a giant, solid waste sculpture, and a Trash Matcher that allows visitors to find appropriate art activities for the solid waste they have available. A new feature called the Badge Matcher helps Brownies, Girl Scouts and their leaders quickly locate art activities that help satisfy badge requirements.

This site is designed for kids, parents, and teachers.

Sample lessons and projects from the Imagination Factory:

America is Beautiful Litter Collage
"Our country is blessed with many natural resources and scenic wonders. Too often, however, we trash our roads, highways, and urban areas with litter. Here's your chance to help solve the problem and make an artistic statement at the same time."

Trashasaurus Rex Sculpture
"Just as folk artists work with whatever they have on hand to make art, you can use found materials to create a sculpture like Trashasaurus Rex and express how you feel about the solid waste problem."

Go Fly a Kite! Kite Making
"Today's kites are made of cloth, paper, plastic and other synthetic materials, and they come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. They range in price from a dollar to hundreds of dollars, but you can save money by making your own kite. If you recycle materials to do this, you'll help conserve landfill space and natural resources, too."

How to Tie and Dye T-Shirts
"Tie-dye is a technique in which certain areas of fabric are bound or tied so as to resist color when the material is immersed in a dyebath. While the craft has been practiced in nearly every part of the world for hundreds of years, it probably began in ancient Asia and spread to Africa."

Vacation Collage
"Besides taking photos of the places they travel, most people collect something along the way as a souvenir of a trip or vacation. Perhaps you picked up a seashell at the beach, a feather in the mountains, or maybe you saved a ticket to a special event such as a concert or ball game."

Visit The Imagination Factory