Cheap and cheerful craft ideas
Ensure you get your paint to pour before attempting to coat glass. HunkyDory.co.uk. £7.
Cushions can make an area sing anew. Mix up more sophisticated crafted cushion with your remnant miracles. 2pk Floral Cushion Cover €5, Ruffle Cushion €8, Floral Embroidered Cushion €10, 2 Button Cushion €8, Aqua Throw €8, Loose Weave Throw €18. Heatons.
Simple drum shades can be easily covered, sprayed, painted or dip-dyed. Take inspiration from the latest colours and prints, this one from Great British Designs. €75.
Washi Tape. So simple to use and easy to get rid of when you’re fed up with the results! Washitapes.co.uk have a huge selection with £3.95 postage.
Take any natural fibre lampshade (polyester and other synthetics won’t drink down the dye) and decide on your new colour. Don’t worry too much about the depth of colour, just get a powder dye close to your choice.
Empty the contents of the package into a bucket large enough to immerse your shade as fully as possible. If you want a deeper shade, use less water; if you want a lighter shade or blush of colour use slightly less powder than recommended. Immerse the shade wearing rubber gloves. Leave for required time and turn over if the other side is still dry. Place on newspaper and allow to dry.
* Tip: You can buy fabric sprays from Plastikote to do the same job on any materials of shade, or use a piece of wallpaper saved from a sample.
The key thing with painting up old bottles is to do the paint job on the inside. It makes them look and feel more like coloured milk glass. Enamel paint will wear best. You will need to cut the paint down to a flowing consistency with a flow medium available at any good craft shop. Using a large basting or agricultural size syringe, squirt the thinned paint inside the dry bottle and roll the bottle around to coat the interior surface. Place upside down to cure for at least 48 hours, being careful of drips on the surface below.
* Tip: These bottles are waterproof and ideal for summer tables outside for a few flowers.
These look utterly charming, but they won’t last more than a season if you’re planting up in them outside, so just have some fun with this project. Measure the diameter of a pot and its height. Double the height of the plant pot measurement and add to the diameter. Use this as the rough diameter of a fabric circle and cut out with pinking shears (if you don’t have shears, just make some tiny darts in the fabric edges). Dip your fabric into some liquid starch and set on a wire rack. Place the pot in the centre and work the fabric neatly up, over and inside the pot, weight it with a smaller pot placed lightly inside if necessary. Allow to dry for 12 hours.
* Tip: Plastic pots are not porous and will hold fabric for longer.
Take five large glass jars or hanging lanterns intended for tea lights, and a few solar string lights — short, cheap ones are best in the €4-€6 range of about 15-20 lights. Charge your lights. 12-18 hours will get a new string going in full sun. Tie a supporting collar of ribbon or string to the neck of the jars. Tie on two hanging lines across from each other with plenty of string or ribbon for length. We want the jars hanging level. Stuff each jar to the brim with a tangle of charged string lights Gather the long hanging strings together and tie off leaving the jars at different heights (less chance of breakage).Hang from a hook or the branch of a tree to glow in the dark.
* Tip: Use horticultural wire forms wrapped in fairy solars to build a light sculpture that will come to life as a centrepiece.
Look out for the latest craze in decorating Washi MT (masking tape) in a range of bright colours and a variety of widths. You can use it to colourise just about anything from party cups to bed posts. If you’re brave enough it’s suited to making wall murals and silhouettes, whipping up stripped paper effects and even laying out patterns on a painted floor. There are hundreds of projects at PinInterest.com, clever and ingenious, if you’re stuck on the idea. As a low-tack product, if the results are too infantile to stand, you can simply rip it off without the worry of lifting paint. From €2.99 per roll. Widely available online, Irish suppliers include www.lilypadcraftsupplies.ie.
* Tip: We prefer this sticky customer reserved for projects such as up-cycling plain candles with a quick wind and creating pretty boxes by combining with decoupage.
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