Kids furniture can cost a pretty penny. Less expensive options include thrift store or garage sale furniture you can fix up. This is a great choice because it’s also eco-friendly. Your second option is to make furniture with other objects, not simply fix up a piece. The problem is that often parents get a decent piece of kids furniture and then have no idea where to start when it comes to creating a cool piece of furniture that a kid will love.
Following are some great ideas for DIY kids furniture that’s also totally low-cost.

DIY Inexpensive Kiddie Table & Chairs!- I …read more

Picture frames are one of the easiest DIY saves you can try. If you find gross old frames at thrift stores or garage sales, have old frames around the house, or some broken frames, you can still fix them up and use them, thus saving money on new ones.

Ideas for saving old frames…
Paint – of course a super easy fix when it’s just cosmetics that are the issue. Remember to remove the glass, or cover it with paper before painting. Also, try odd colors. For example, silver metallic paint doesn’t look that flashy, it actually looks awesome when used to …read more

Salt is one of the cheapest items I can think of. You can get so much at the store for under a buck and besides cooking you can use it for tons o’ cool things.

Make a homemade salt body scrub – you can make a basic salt scrub by just mixing salt and water into a paste or you can get fancy and add fresh herbs, essential oils, or olive oil to make a more luxurious, but still cheap compared to boutique, type scrub. See a recipe for sugar scrub – you can use salt instead of the sugar.
Fix your …read more

I recently saw this DIY kiddie furniture project and totally fell in love. You won’t believe that a mama made this with reusable and recyclable materials – it looks like it came from some upscale mod boutique. Take a look:
This table and chair set was made by blogger Maya Luna and instructions are posted at her crafty cool blog, Maya Made. The set is made with easy and cheap items that can be reused again such as cardboard, a pizza pan, and fabric (think old scraps of fabric). You can make this for very little money and then recycle or …read more

We had a few of the juice cans from those frozen concentrated juice drinks sitting around the house. We had a few bored kids. Mix them together and… free musical instruments. You can’t get much thriftier than that.
To make a juice can shaker, you’ll need:

A juice can and lid (We use Welches)
Beads, pebbles, beans, or rice
Hot glue or tape

Thoroughly clean the can and the lid. Pour the beads or other items into the can and hot glue the lid on. If you’re allowing a child to do the project, have the child tape the lid on with a piece …read more

You’re cleaning out your closets and tossing garments willy nilly into the thrift store bag when you realize that the dress you’re about to discard has a print that is too youthful for you, but perfect for your child. Can you possibly remake it into a child’s garment or is the task going to be impossible?
With the number of people creating new garments out of old, I’d say it is definitely possible. Reconstructed garments, called recons for short, are very popular with crafters. If you’re afraid to just jump in and start cutting and hacking at your old clothes, …read more

I needed to discard an entire closet worth of clothing this week. All those things I hadn’t worn in ten years and wouldn’t wear for another ten but had a sentimental attachment to all had to go. It was something I should have done a long time ago, but I never was able to bring myself to do it. Funny how needing space for something else made it happen in about 30 minutes!
Anyway, some of the stuff really wasn’t that special, but a few things really had wonderful memories attached to them. I didn’t want to completely get …read more

We’ve been having fun with paper bag albums this week. They are super fun for kids to make because of all the pockets and flaps and can be really gorgeous when a teen or adult works on one. All you need to make one is three paper lunch bags, some fancy paper scraps and embellishments, glue, a hole punch and some ribbon or yarn. If you’re giving someone an album as a gift, you’ll also need color copies of photos or duplicate photos. Never use originals!
Things that are nice, but not essential, are grommets to reinforce the holes and tags …read more

Mismatched, ugly, too big, or just plain oddball buttons are perfect for tons of recycled kid projects that you can make on the fly. You don’t want to toss buttons, because they’ll just sit in that old landfill forever. Yeah one button is small, but many add up, and why not use them if you have them. If you don’t have buttons, thrift stores carry bags of them for super cheap.
Here are some ideas – although I’m sure you can think of more.
Button hair bands: Cut a piece of extra elastic to an average hair band size (imagine if a …read more

 
Have you ever realized that it was somebody’s birthday, but did not have a card on hand? I am always running into that problem. So, I decided to make it easy on myself and keep a card making basket handy in my art closet. Whenever I see some card stock on sale, I pick up a package. If I find a great sale at the local craft store, I grab a stamp or two, some ink or some paints to add to my card basket. Then, when an occasion pops up that I am without a card for, I just take …read more