Hands-on how-tos for your home, your hobbies and the road.
Crafts · 66 guides · Page 4
Hand spinners often pay hundreds of dollars for a spinning wheel, but with woodworking skills, you can construct one yourself. This guide covers design options from simple to complex, the basic mechanics, and factors to consider before starting, so you can create a functional wheel tailored to your spinning needs.
Dried pasta crafts are a beloved activity for children. While some techniques use rubbing alcohol and make the pasta unsafe to eat, combining food coloring with vinegar offers a nontoxic alternative that still produces vibrant colors. This approach lets you create macaroni jewelry and art that can later be cooked and consumed.
Crafting a linked string of paper figures is a delightful activity, and it’s equally fun to reveal to a child how these connected cutouts are made.
Two-part urethane mixtures let you create either rigid or soft polyurethane foam. Rigid foam serves purposes like insulation, temporary flooring, theatrical props, and components in coolers and aircraft. Flexible foam is common in packaging, cushions, and mattresses. Safety gear such as eye protection and a respirator is necessary because the chemicals are somewhat toxic.
Whether you are working with the airy tulle beneath a tutu, turning crocheted yarn into a basket, or treating the thick mesh of a lacrosse goal, there are multiple techniques for making net material hold its shape.
Nails serve as connectors for holding things together, and they also appear in crafts and scientific tests. Rust forms when water molecules react with iron in an electrochemical process that produces a new substance. Because nails often contain iron, tin, or steel, they can corrode readily when exposed to moisture.
Get ready for warm-weather celebrations by making your own party hats. Choose between a beach ball design or an upside-down ice cream cone, and you'll instantly feel the festive spirit once you put one on.
Fiberglass garage doors have a slick, nonabsorbent surface that makes it difficult for primer and paint to grip. To refinish one successfully, you must prepare the surface thoroughly; otherwise, the new coating may peel or flake. The slick nature of fiberglass also calls for a specific painting method to achieve a smooth finish without drips or brush marks.
Wood is a classic painting support that offers distinctive grain, yet its porous nature often calls for sealing before acrylics are applied. Acrylic paint consists of pigment held in a water-based acrylic or plastic emulsion, dries rapidly, comes in many hues, gives off no harmful vapors, and can be washed off with soap and water.
Crayola's Model Magic is a lightweight, non-toxic air-dry clay that can be decorated with water-based paints or markers after it hardens. While thin pieces typically dry in about a day, thicker sculptures might require up to 72 hours to fully set.
Numerous renowned painters, such as Picasso, Miro, Vuillard, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Degas, have created oil paintings on cardboard. This support is inexpensive and easy to obtain, and despite not being ideal for oil paint, many such works have endured in museum collections for more than a century.
A tarot deck consists of 78 cards employed for divination. Creating a personalized deck can strengthen your bond with the cards. Since the imagery is your own, interpreting meanings becomes more intuitive.
