Be a thrifty crafter :0)

Hey guys!

Today I thought I would post some of my best tips for stocking up on your craft materials while keeping the cost very low :)

You may already know/follow some of these tips but if you don't hopefully it will help you to enrich your craft box and save you money!

Here they are, my top tips!:

1. Ribbon can be very expensive to buy especially thick luxurious satin ribbon or patterned stuff. However if you keep your eyes open and take a look at some things before you throw them out you may find it on more things than you would imagine! e.g chocolate boxes, cards, gift wrapping, and even around boxes of bubble bath sets or Christmas cake boxes! So keep your peepers peeled and you'll soon find your ribbon stash building up (you can sometimes find buttons or beads in these places too!). This is just some of the ribbon I have collected:

2. If you are getting rid of clothes (and they are not going to the charity shop) make sure to cut off the buttons! This is something so easily forgotten but if you remember you can find yourself with a full set of buttons ready to be used in a project :) Also if the clothes are made of some interesting fabric cut out a large square or two and keep it. Then you will have some beautiful fabric to make a dress for your next amigurumi creation, for example. Without costing you a penny!

3. Get a large jar or tub and store all of your yarn tails from your projects in it as there are tonnes of uses for these scraps. Firstly you can tie them all together (leaving short lengths of the tied yarns sticking out at the knots) to create your own rainbow coloured furry novelty yarn. Secondly you can stuff toys etc... with them. Yarn scraps are great for stuffing toys as they won't cause lumps in toys unlike some kinds of stuffing and they make toys really soft and squidy, thats what I used to stuff my Red Nose Day monster :) You can also use them to make cool rainbow pom-poms! Again without costing you anything.

I keep all my scraps in an old sweet jar:

4. Collect up birthday, Christmas and celebration cards as you can cut sections of them out to make pretty and unique labels for your handmade items! Here is my collection of cards:

5. My final tip is ASK YOUR FAMILY (or drop hints about saving you their craft stuff if you don't feel cheeky enough to ask :). Ask your mum, dad, brother, auntie, nan, grandad, Anyone! to save up any old buttons or beads or ribbon they find lying around and ask them (politely! :0) if you can have the stuff. You could even make them a little thank you gift from some of the stuff they give you. A while back my auntie gave me a load of buttons and my nan gave me lots of embroidery thread, all of which has come in very useful.

I'm pretty sure that that is all :) I hope this post has been even the littlest bit helpful.

Happy crafting,

Bye :D