Arts & Crafts Guides
How to Make Your Own House For Your Dolls
How to Make Your Own House For Your Dolls A dollhouse is a traditional toy perfect for little girls who are old enough to help you with arts and crafts but still young enough to enjoy playing with dolls. Building a doll house is a fairly complex at home craft that your daughter (or son) can help you with. Here’s a quick guide for how to make your own house for your dolls. Select a Scale ...
How to Make Sturdy Paper Airplanes in Study Hall
How to Make Sturdy Paper Airplanes in Study Hall The ability to make good paper airplanes put you pretty high on the totem pole in junior high school. Making sturdy paper airplanes that could fly all the way across the room and do tricks made you the coolest kid in the room. There are many varieties of paper airplane to choose from, but by far the simplest and sturdiest paper airplane is a design ...
Where to Get Fake Money for Your Child
Where to Find Play Money for Your Kid Knowing where to get fake money for your child can pay off dividends when it comes to teaching them how to count currency, identify the various types of cash notes, and be a responsible consumer. Plus, younger children may be prone to rip or tear bills as their curious hands explore the texture, so using fake currency will save you from losing real money. Fak...
Make Your Own Tye-Dye T-Shirts – For Kids
Create Tie-Dyed Clothing While people often associate tie-dye styles with the hippie culture of the ‘60s and ‘70s, it’s been around far longer than most would imagine. In Peru, for example, examples of tie-dyed clothing have been traced back to somewhere between 500 and 800 A.D. The art of tye-dyeing remains popular to this day, and our article is devoted to showing you how to make your own...
Preschool Crafts – Making Paper Penguins
Everyone loves those cute, flightless birds known as penguins, and their distinctive shape and coloring makes them an ideal subject for an art project aimed at younger children. Even if you’ve never tried your hand at preschool crafts before, the simple instructions provided below will have you making paper penguins in no time. But before we list the easy-to-follow steps, let’s take a look at ...
What Are RC Toys?
A lot of men, children and even women have started collecting R/C or remote control toys that they can play with or assemble during their pastime. It’s a hobby that provides real satisfaction especially for those who prefer to assemble their own RCs from scratch instead of buying the ready to run or ready to fly varieties. The challenge lies in getting the RC up and running after it has been ful...
Middle School Science Fair – How to Make a Fake Volcano
Middle School Science Fair – How to Make a Fake Volcano The old “fake volcano” is a classic science fair project for middle school students. Understanding how a volcano works is just part of the project–the highlight is the actual explosion of the volcano itself. While this may not be the most original science fair project, it is certainly a popular choice and has a cool vi...
How to Make a Barbie House
How to Make a Barbie House If you’ve ever shopped around for a house for Barbie, you know the market’s pretty limited. You’d think the people at Mattel would understand that Barbie has a lot of stuff and needs a house that can hold it all. But no–most of the commercially available Barbie houses are too small for Barbie’s extensive wardrobe, not to mention her collecti...
How to Draw Anime
Anime is a fantasy style of art invented in Japan but loved the world over. Anime and manga are both known for “big eyes and small mouths.” Learning how to draw anime means learning the principles of anime sketching, then starting to sketch your own favorite characters in the Japanimation industry. When you’ve gained a certain amount of competence in the craft of drawing anime an...
How to Repair a Denim Comforter
Denim comforters tend to be pretty durable, so learning how to make minor repairs on denim should let you keep the comforter in working shape for a long time. Here’s how to repair a denim comforter with minor sewing tips. Search for Denim Fabric Buy light or medium fabric, unless you have a heavy sewing machine. Heavy denim tends to be stiff, so it can gum up many home sewing machines. Wash ...
How to Cure Wood
When you are using wood on a building project, that wood almost always needs to be cured. Those who buy wood at the lumber store aren’t going to need to dry their wood, since the lumberyard has dried the wood already. But if you are using your own lumber, you’re going to know how to cure wood. Wood Curing Techniques First of all, “curing wood” is the process of drying wood ...
How to Crochet
Learning how to crochet isn’t that hard, at least when you’re talking about basic crochet stitches. Learn basic crotcheting techniques to get started and see whether you want to learn more advanced crochet stitches. What Is the Difference in Crocheting and Knitting? Knitting uses two pointed needles to make patterns, while crocheting uses one hooked needle with a hook on the end. Croch...
How to Draw Animals Step by Step
Drawing animals can be frustrating for beginning artists, because animals represent a huge variety of shapes, forms and features. Learning how to draw animals step by step requires learning a few basic concepts of animal anatomy. Eliminating these typical mistakes will improve your animal sketching skills rapidly. Animal Studies Before you get good at drawing animal sketches from memory, study pic...
How to Draw Cartoons Step by Step
Drawing cartoons lets us poke fun at the people and things in life that need to be taken down a peg or two, or simply lets a cartoonist express his or her own unique perspective on life. Learning how to draw cartoons step by step lets you become a cartoonist, which allows you to express yourself in a way you never have before. Cartoonish drawings are about humorous exaggerations of life, highlight...
How to Draw a Cat
Learning how to draw a cat can because of their awkward poses and striped and spotty markings. Here’s five simple steps to making a beautiful picture of a grumpy old cat. As with any drawing, the figure of a cat is easy to form if you break it up into smaller steps. One great way to prepare to draw a cat is to study a live one. Watch how a cat walks, sits, sleeps, stalks, or does anything at...
How to Make a Paper Airplane
Growing up, knowing how to make a paper airplane was the difference between being cool and being totally lame. Though there are many different paper airplane designs to choose from, I find this simple glider fool-proof and easy to “pilot” to a soft landing. First, gather your materials — one sheet of notebook or stationary paper will work fine. Make sure you have a clean and flat...
How to Make a Pinata
Pinatas have been used for thousands of years to mark celebrations, birthdays, and other special events. There are different theories about the origin of pinatas — some claim they were invented by the Chinese (Marco Polo witnessed the Chinese hitting pinatas with sticks and burning them to scatter their ashes) while still others say their origin lies with the Aztecs or Mayans. Both the Mexic...
How to Draw
Learning how to draw is a matter of learning four different elements. If you learn and practice the concepts of line, shape, perspective, and light, you will find the ability to draw comes naturally. Learn Drawing When you decide to learn drawing techniques it’s best to start with the basics. The following are some basic drawing steps. Line The line is the most basic unit and element of any ...
How to Make Soap at Home
Learning how to make soap at home is a simple way to save a little money on an essential household item. Once you perfect your own soap recipe, you can make a cleansing agent that’s exactly to your family’s specific needs. You’ll smell exactly the way you want to smell, and be able to avoid allergies that many commercial soaps cause. Below is a recipe to make soap at home. Once y...
How to Draw a Rose Step by Step
The rose is the most popular flower to draw, but it’s also one of the most difficult. The swirls and contours of a red rose evoke feelings of romance and intimacy, but it’s not always easy to draw those swirls and contours. But when you learn how to draw a rose step by step, you’ll be able to reproduce rose petal designs with little trouble. How to Draw Roses The following are in...
How to Paint
When you want to learn how to paint, the best thing to do is buy some paint materials and start painting. Painting is a hobby that you only get better at by practicing. With a few instructions in painter techniques and time spent putting colors on a canvas, you’ll start to figure out how to paint. How to Paint with Watercolors Watercolors are a good way to learn to paint, because you donR...
How to Make Hair Bows
It may seem complicated, but it’s not difficult to learn how to make hair bows for young girls all by yourself. Making your own hair bows is a matter of knowing what materials to use and how to use them. Instructions for Making Hair Bows The most basic hair bows are made of grosgrain — a “ribbed” ribbon material that is attractive and easy to work with. You can use almost a...
How to Draw a Dog
When kids are too young to draw very well but old enough to WANT to draw, making even the simples shapes can be frustrating. It doesn’t have to be this way. Understanding how to draw a dog can best be accomplished by seeing it as a series of small sketches rather than an attempt to capture an entire picture at once. Children have trouble drawing things like dogs, because they have complica...
How to Make a Toga
Despite popular opinion, Toga parties are not limited to fraternity halls. Togas also make great Halloween costume. The thing is — they can be really damn hard to make. Its because of this that we’ve created this guide for how to make a toga. Making a Toga Instructions Here are some instructions for making a toga. Want to have the coolest Toga in town? Listen up. Toga Fabricc First and...
How to Draw Naruto
Naruto is a cartoon character beloved by kids because of his story — he’s a teenage ninja who’s trying to become the greatest ninja warrior in history. The Naruto series is long and complex — if you’re under the age of 12, you probably need no refreshers. If curious about how to draw Naruto, here’s how. Drawing Naruto Cartoon Character We’ve put together 5...
How to Make Paper Mache
Papier mache (usually called by the simpler “paper mache”) is an easy and fun craft to make. You can use paper mache to make ornaments, pieces of art, sculpture, and any other shape you can imagine. It is cheap to make and (surprisingly) eco-friendly. Why is that? Paper mache uses waste paper like old newspapers and stationary and recycles them into a new artform. Once you figure out ...
How to Knit
Learning how to knit involves learning about all kinds of different knitting techniques. It’s going to take different skills to knit a scarf than it does to knit a blanket, for example. Once you start to learn a couple of different stitches, though, you’ll be able to knit sweaters, socks, hats and bags just the same. Knitting Instructions Below are some basic knitting instructions. Thi...
How to Draw Flames Step by Step
There are a number of general rules to drawing any basic shape in order to make the process easier, and these can also be applied when learning how to draw flames. Although there are many different types of flames, by following the steps below you can create any type of flame you want. How to Draw Flames The following tips will help you understand how to draw flames step by step. Outer Shape Like ...
How to Draw People Step by Step
Mastering how to draw people step by step is a matter of learning a drawing technique, then following that technique with the appropriate deviations for the person you’re sketching. If you want to be an expert at drawing human bodies, you need to study the proportions of human anatomy. You’ll also need to practice a lot. The basics of drawing people is a pretty simple and straightforwa...