2015 in review

The Frugal Crafter Blog

Happy New Year Friends! I want to thank you so much for spending time with me over the past year. I have been taking a bit of time off over the past week and reflecting on how lucky I am to have such a wonderful community  of arty and crafty friends to share with every day. I hope you have a safe and happy new year and I will see you tomorrow with a new tutorial! Till then here are some fun stats about the past year here at the Frugal Crafter’s Weblog! Happy Crafting!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 1,100,000 times in 2015. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 47 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to…

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Have you been missing videos? And DIY Glue Dot Tutorial!

The Frugal Crafter Blog

Hi friends! Well, I have been busy with my new hobby…learning how to twitter…or tweet, I’m not really sure. But the reason I have logged into my long neglected twitter account was because of you guys! I have been receiving emails lately from some viewers who were upset that they were missing videos, one woman had thought I stopped posting over the summer and quite a few were saying that my daily videos were not showing up in their You Tube subscriber feeds and they were not getting the subscriber emails from YouTube. I did not know what to do, I did not realize that everything you subscribe to does not show up in your feed until I had to hunt down the latest videos from one of my favorite YouTubers. Then it clicked! I remembered that my Youtube account has a feature to post to twitter as soon as…

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YOU can paint this snowy cardinal!

The Frugal Crafter Blog

Hi friends! If you have been thinking of giving acrylic painting a try this is a great first painting.  FYI This project will work well in oils or gouache too. 🙂

I will show you how to sketch on the design and paint it step by step and it won’t take very long, an advanced painter can complete it in about 30 minutes and a beginner can get ‘er done in under an hour, but don’t rush, relax and enjoy the process!

Free painting video tutorial!!!!

All of the supplies I used (except for the 1″ wide flat I picked up at the beginning) can be found in the December Smart Art Box, Last I checked they still had a few December boxes left if you want the exact kit I used. I have yet to be disappointed with a Smart Art box, they contain all the supplies you need to…

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Tips for crafting with kids

The Frugal Crafter Blog

One of my favorite activities to do at Christmas is to craft {surprise!} and I really like to take quiet times with my children to help them make special gifts too. Wether you are showing a child how to knit, food crafting or simply gluing macaroni to construction paper I’ll give you some tips on making your crafting time with children fun and stress free.

1. ABP-Always Be Prepared This scouting motto should be you crafting motto when working with kids. Assemble all of the supplies you need for a project before you invite you child to craft with you. These few moments of preparation will save you and your child frustration during your crafting process and crafting is all about relaxing and enjoying your time.

2. Pick a time to craft when you have nothing else going on and when you child is not tired, hungry or cranky (or you…

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Adventures in Plastic Canvas….

The Frugal Crafter Blog

Happy Sunday folks, we have another snowy, stay at home, weekend here in Maine and I love it! Recently my girls learned how to stitch on plastic canvas. Their school bus driver prepared little kits for the kids who rode the bus to work on during their rides to and from school. It was a hit with many of the children and my kids asked me if I could get them some supplies to use at home. So the other day I picked up some needles and 7 point plastic canvas and made them up a few project kits. I found some patterns online for free and I also put some plain graph paper in page protectors because free plastic canvas patterns for kids were not as easy to come by as I thought they would be. I tried my hand at making a “minecraft creeper” pattern for my son…

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Strawberry Picking!

The Frugal Crafter Blog

Summer in New England, nothing better! Especailly during strawberry season, we picked berries a couple weeks ago, picking were slim but we had a good time. I used stamps from the Strawberries and Watermelon digital stamps set and the shipping tag template freebie as well as the journal block freebie all from Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff.

Don’t forget everything in the Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff shop (myGrafico only) is 34% off through Saturday!

This page qualifies for the following challenges: By the Cute and Girly (summertime), Cowgirls Sunday Challenge (scallops, buttons), Drunken Stampers (summer), Easy Craft Projects (summer), Kaboodledoodles (summer), KLS stamping (summer) and  Oh la la creations (summer).

Here is a look at this stamp set, it is perfect for coloring with Copic Markers:

Scrapbooking tips:

Thread hemp twine through all the buttons at once then hot glue to page.

Print your journal box in color and accent it with…

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Some Scrappin’ and some SALEin’ going on!

The Frugal Crafter Blog

Hi there! I decided that since this is my birthday month, and I turned 35, I should have a 35% off sale in my Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff MyGrafico shop {better late than never right?}

I mentioned earlier how I have been lacking creative mojo this week and was making myself forge ahead and create but I want to amend that a bit…create something a little different than usual. If you usually paint, try knitting, if you usually make cards create a scrapbook page instead…and that is what I did! I used the paper dolls from the Laundry Kids SVG set to create the dolls in these pages of my daughters bridging from Daisy to Brownie Girl Scouts:

Now let me point out the “moldy-oldie” products on these pages: Chipboard letters at least 5 years old from the Dollar Spot at Target, “Clipper Clips” from Around The Block holding a folded daisy…

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Origami dolls in the living room…

The Frugal Crafter Blog

Howdy friends! Today we put away all of the Christmas decorations. It’s funny how spacious the house feels after that! We finally got some snow and the kids got to play in it. I was still feeling a bit run down so I decided to try the paper doll kit my sister gave me for Christmas

Hopefully the pic is OK, I am on the couch blogging from my cellphone but was having so much fun with this I had to share! All of these dolls take 4 pieces of paper. I am making notes in the book that came in the kit of the paper sizes so hopefully I can make these with my other origami papers. I was actually going to buy this kit for myself, I carried it around Barnes & Noble for an hour one day but put it back because I am frugal or whatever…

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Easy Winter Decorations!

The Frugal Crafter Blog

Hi Friends! Looks like we are going to get some snow tonight! We had a 50 degree green Christmas yesterday but the weatherman says 1″-3″ of snow tonight and 4″-8″ on Tuesday. I am glad to have snow when the kids are on break because then we won’t have to go anywhere and they can play in it! Even if you are not getting snow where you live ay least you can make some paper snowflakes! I’ll show you how with inexpensive doilies from our sponsor Papermart!

I also want to let you know that Papermart is having an after Christmas clearance sale with 30% off selected items, just click on the after clearance banner on the Papermart website to see all the deals. The Candy Cane stripe and Christmas tree ribbon might have to come live at my house, it would look fantastic on kraft paper packages! They…

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Santa’s Magic Key!

The Frugal Crafter Blog

Hi Friends! I have been a bit wiped out the last 2 days but I think I feel my energy coming back! I wanted to get this post up early today in cast you don’t have a chimney and need a way for Santa to get in your home to deliver presents!

If your child is worried that there is no chimney to come down they can leave a magic key outside, only Santa has the magic to use it to open your door! The cute Santa stamp is from our sponsor ArtNeko. This video also contains a relaxing coloring tutorial, if you need a bit of relaxation today give it a look!

Remember to mention “the frugal crafter” anytime you order from ArtNeko to receive a 10% discount or free shipping over $50. I better get back to my holiday work, being sick yesterday put me behind! Thanks…

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