DIY Blog

Turn that Valentine’s Day candy box into a heart-shaped frame.

Or better yet, make your own valentine’s day chocolates and don’t buy that heart-shaped box in the first place.

Recycled Valentine’s Candy Box Picture Frame [link][via]

Etsy is an online marketplace for buying and selling all things handmade. Here’s a few tips on running a successful Etsy shop. Wouldn’t it be nice to turn your hobby into a revenue?

How To Run a Successful Etsy Shop [link][via]

etsy [link]

Here are a few tutorials on bookbinding. Using these techniques, you can repair old books, or make your own. You can even make your own notebooks using recycled paper or with paper you made yourself. These make great gifts. Hurry up, only 9 7 days until Festivus!

DIY Bookbinding:

• Handbound book: [link]
• DIY book press (and perfect binding): [link]

Edited debember 17th:

I had to add this great tutorial by Micheal Shannon:

• Make Your Own Moleskin [link]

This nice set of instructions shows you how to make your own paper from recycled paper. If you’re like most people, you get lots of flyers, papers and ads in your mailbox (I don’t because we have official stickers we can put on our mailboxes that say we don’t want any unsolicited bulk mail in Montréal). Nevertheless, I still get some bills and non-bulk paper waste. Handmade paper is much more interesting than its industrially produced equivalent. It has a texture, and each sheet is unique and special.

<rant>This project could appeal to scrapbookers. Real DIY ones, not the ones that buy cheesy pre-made kits or stupid sticker sheets. Scrapbooking should be about recycling, not generating more waste.</rant>

Imagine binding your own book (I’ll post something about that this weekend) made of paper you made yourself. You could also make your own holiday cards with them, or whatever project you can think of.

How To Recycle and Make Your Own Paper [link] [via]