If you painted the eye beads a coat of clear nail varnish, or similar, over the darker brown, then they would read as eyes because they would be shiny next to the matt of all the 'fur' beads. Hope that makes sense. They all look brilliant! x
I was the Handicraft Director at a summer camp. During one parents weekends, one of the Dad's was intently working on a pony bead bracelet. Turns out it was his anniversary. He forgot. So, to buy himself some time, he was making his wife a "diamond tennis bracelet" Inspired-I did get some upscale materials and made some kind of classy stuff... BTW: his wife thought the tennis bracelet was hilarious and far more appropriate for unwrapping in the middle of the woods than the fine jewelry gift that was "waiting at home" (his wife was pretty certain that it was still waiting at the jewelry store)
The vinegar-y smell is really common in items that are shipped via cargo container, it's a preventative spray against both fungus and pests, while the items are sitting for months in a dark shipping container with no ventilation.
That's interesting... my daughter got a kinetic sand play bin, and the colorful sands smell fine but the naturally colored sand smells very strongly of vinegar. Maybe just that type was shipped via cargo ship??
@@CWorgen5732perhaps the process of coloring the other sands had anti fungal/mold properties and only the natural sand needed the vinegar smelling process?
I was a child in the 80's. Safety pins with seed beads were very popular to trade and put on your shoe laces. Also knotted friendship bracelets made with embroidery floss.
Suggestion: use string if it's meant to move (earrings, etc.) or wire of it will be wiggled less (a still decoration on a wall, etc.) The ones I've made to wear with wire always break eventually. Glass seed beads get heavy after a while.
Oh the crafty things we did in the 70s!!! I remember being shocked by the advances in kits for 80s kids and 90s kids. Things that stand out in my memory: Macrame belt kit, Wrapping colored thread around pins on velvet cardboard bases to make images (String Art), Paint by Number kits, Potholder kits, Embroidery kits, Cross stitch kits, Needlepoint kits, Latchhook kits, and at camp - making those plastic lanyard woven cords, then in school teaching each other to make knotted friendship bracelets (basically miniature macrame)
Remember those lanyards made of flat plastic thread? I remember making so many of those in summer camp. Also latch hook, shrinky dinks, paper fashion dolls, a knitting machine that broke on the first use, basically any klutz craft kit I could get my hands on from the toy store. So many crafts that I want to revisit myself. Also my aunt brought to Thanksgiving this year a rag wreath she was making by just stabbing precut pieces of fabric into a straw wreath with a screwdriver. Looked very fun and cathartic.
I guess the wooden version of it could be a great coaster or something to put your hot pots/bowls/kettle on? I think we had something like that in the kitchen when I was little and it was adorable, maybe you'll find this idea fun too!
We had a square hot pad made this way, out of corks from wine bottles. but they had also woven the cotton threads through crosswise. it was stable enough to throw as a frisbee.
those came out very cute, but I can't stop laughing at Matt at the end asking if you wanted anything from guitar center. I agree with him, your loss lol
I was a child of the 60’s. I loved “sewing cards” like a dot-to-dot with yarn. I also loved weaving potholders on a loom and making mosaic pictures with braid you glued down following a design and filled the spaces with glitter or crushed rock, like aquarium gravel in colors. I always sewed from a very young age. I later learned knitting. When my daughter was young we did the bead pets. She was in 3rd grade when her oldest brother left for college. She hid bead animal in all his boxes!
You know what I loved? Shaving crayons and melting between wax paper! I wish there was an adult equivalent.😸 I sew also, have since my early teens and enjoy it and occasionally hate it at the same time.
Paint by Number kits; Embroidery; Knitting; Crocheting; I made a stuffed clown doll using a pattern on the back of the fiberfill bag; woven potholders; pom pom poncho. Never did beads as a kid, but later in life I did a fair amount of bead work and wire jewelry crafting--all of my earrings I made myself, including the ear wires. I taught knitting and crochet as an older adult and crochet every day.
A big childhood craft for us was "window colour". At least that was its German name. So the plasticy transparent paints that you stick to the window afterwards. HUGE! Expescially with colouring in pages to paint over. Every season new window decor! Yeah! :D Also: potato stamps, salt dough shapes, marbling things like easter eggs with nail poish on top of warm water (does that have a name?), making paper lanterns with transparent paper. Those ironing beads and in my time (early 2000s): scooby doo bands. They smelled so much like cheap plastic.
Water marbling! It's also called hydro dipping. Haven't done it with easter eggs before, though it makes a lot of sense. I might have to try it one year instead of just dyeing them :)
I was a mother in the 90s. I now understand why I hadn't seen bead pets when I was younger. I'm not sure but I may have seen them in late 80s. My cute kids have made them. I did latchhook. My grandma taught me to crochet. Did cross stitch and tried embroidery. There were a lot of things we did with my son in the 90s. I have also done those with my kids. Your wood beads made excellent pets. Very cute! Trivets are what I was thinking of with the otter and then you said it.
Love Pottery for the People. I so want kiln. Although given after the newness wore off, I bet it would end up where I store my stash of beads (including pony beads, glass beads, and Parker beads), Latch hook supplies, and candlemaking supplies...etc. But I so want a kiln and clay.
Name suggestions: Comeback Crafts Nostalgia Notions or Notions of Nostalgia Throwback Knacks Retro Crafts Modern Memories I'm just spitballing some names. It's funny you bring this up, because I've been thinking about making a giant gecko out of hand made fabric beads as a giant throw pillow. And I found the same crochet geckos!
A big 90's/aughties craft I remember loving was quilling and making things with mini terracotta pots and wood beds. I specifically remember doing a bunch of little penguins with the upside down pot for the body/belly
Nostalgia Crafts. We did a lot of crafts: Perler Beads, tie dye, friendship bracelets, those plastic lanyards bracelets, and making play houses out of cardboard boxes (stuff my mother liked to do with us) but not really kits. I don't think art & craft kits were the same as they are now when I was a kid (early 80s), it was completely different when I was teen. The only kit I clearly remember is getting one of the loop potholder looms. We also got introduced to a lot of crafts in school and after school programs so we already knew we liked something before we got our own supplies. My mom did care for kits as much as letting us figure it out on our own.
A craft that I did when I was young and still do 30 years later is origami. It was great. You didn't need a lot of stuff, just paper, and could do so many things... I still have my first origami book and still cherish it ! ❤ Thank you for your videos. They're always interesting and fun. ☺️
@@mareene6803 Oh yes, origami ! I knew how to do a few basic things as a child but got more into it in my last year of high school because of a friend who would often do them in class. The teachers wouldn't mind because she was quiet and listening, and she would often let things she had done on the table, so they often picked them up to keep them 😁 Then there were both of us making fidget toys with many simple pieces folded together ^^ I still have them, along with an entire rabbit family made by her and stars with schools paper with her handwriting. Her boyfriend did even more complex pieces that were quite big with lots of tiny details. And they had origami cranes evrywhere from various sizes and colors at their wedding for decoration. Really want to get back into it now :)
Nobody in my family was very creative, but I did ask for craft kits for Christmas. My mother and grandmother crocheted, but that was about the extent of it. When I was very young l, around seven, my grandmother taught me to crochet just in a straight line. I would spend hours and hours to try to make great big long line so that I could, you know, tie it all up together to make it look like a normal crocheted object. I guess she never taught me anything other than a simple chain stitch so I didn’t know about double crochet and things lol. I also recall receiving a craft kit with a purse that I could embroider something pretty on the front. I can’t remember them all, but I got one every year for quite a few years. There were a few years when my mother made our clothing with a sewing machine, but she didn’t do that for very long, and didn’t really seem to so much after that. I loved sewing with my little Barbie, sewing machine, and I made a lot of doll clothes over the years. As an adult, I started sewing just to save money. I would make my own curtains and crochet blankets and things that I needed. I have still not graduated to really making clothing effectively, but I’m getting close lol. My most important craft that I do now is Quilting. I have hand pieced one quilt, pieced another one on the machine that I hand quilted, and now I’m working on my third one which I think will be done all with the machine, except I embroidered some designs on some of the squares. So it’s always something with me.
One kit I remember (and I’m a lot older than you) was the dipped wire flowers. So, you make a petal shape out of wire, then you dip it into this viscus, brightly colored, petroleum-smelling liquid which made a thin film in the wire shape. You let it dry overnight and wire all the petals together to form a flower. The petals all dried semi-see-through… like glass. Very pretty! I’m not sure such a thing is around anymore…probably causes cancer.
Oh my god I did this!! And I had completely forgotten about it! I remember it looked so cool and felt really smooth once dry, but if you didn't do it just right you'd end up with holes... Okay, that's going on the list to look up!
I think I've seen that on Pinterest somewhere! No idea what the liquid was though, I think something I couldn't easily get (or it is something that doesn't have an easy to find equal here in the not-USA). Maybe I pinned it? Should I check?
Okay so I checked and the one I saved used 2 coats of wood glue (1 dipped, second painted on) and then painted them with nail polish. So that wouldn't be transparent (unless transparent nail polish? Or maybe watered down with acetone?) but they could still be very pretty.
I totally feel this. My mom was very "crafty" as well. Too many to list but she was particularly talented at crochet. The one craft that has been my nemesis. Cooking was also her go-to as we got older.
It was the 1960s… we made wire loops and dipped them into clear, colored toxic goo that definitely contained toluene. It made flower petals and got us high AF 😂 this was kid friendly crafting back then
It's a great idea, remaking crafts from childhood into more grownup concepts. I remember the thread friendship bracelets everyone made way back in high school in the 80s. Not the lanyard ones, the ones with embridery floss, which I suspect you may have a bit of in your stash already!
Pearler beads were one of my favorite childhood crafts. You can make boxes out of them and 3D things, too, if you layer them. It's not something I ever tried, though. The little idea catalogs were always so fun
My mom was a CampFire Girl leader. She came up with so many different crafts for indoors and outdoors. Cooking sausage and eggs over a campfire in a paper bag. Hobo stew in a metal coffee can. We made necklaces from clear marbles that she heated in a cast-iron skillet, plunged them in ice water so they cracked in the middle and attached them to jewelry findings. We did a lot of felt crafts. Built bird houses out of popsicle sticks and so much more.
I also came from a crafty family, dad mostly did woodwork and designing, mom was a potter by trade (handbuilding rather than using a wheel) till repetitive strain injuries made her give it up in the late 90s, she still does flower arrangement, her gardens are beautiful, and I may have inspired her to get back into sewing again, but she was always brimming with little craft ideas when I was a kid, though getting a kit of something was rare, there was actually a small independently-owned craft and craft supply shop in our town so we got the stuff and did the thing. She did macrame as well but never taught me, but she did get me started in beadwork, and I made a lot of jewelry, some of it in the same style you are using for your bead pets though I never did those, some with a bead loom, some in other styles that I'd never seen but turned out to be traditional somewhere, some methods I figured out that I've still never seen anyone else do. The kits I remember getting were where you arranged those plastic beads into a metal frame then melted them in the oven, and one where you had all these tiny little tumbled rock bits in different colours and were supposed to glue them onto the card in specific colours and arrangements, the one I remember was a Monarch butterfly bit it was very time-consuming and fiddly and I'm honestly not sure I finished it before I'm assuming my brother inevitably destroyed it as he eventually did with most things. I still have my calligraphy set somewhere which I think was an attempt to correct my atrocious handwriting, but being left-handed and not having a lefty nib, it was never very much fun because it always came out wrong, at this point I'm seriously considering teaching my right hand to do calligraphy, because at this point I'm practically ambidextrous anyways... Glass etching, weaving on a little tabletop loom about the size of a typewriter, candlemaking, baking, and crocheting to name just a few of the crafty things we did... I learned to knit too but was never able to grasp the concept of purl though, so I gave up and tried crochet instead, and have stuck with that and forgotten anything I know about knitting. One of my childhood favourite things to do was painting, but it was always such a production to set up and so messy that it was very rare that we got to do it, but even so Mom had cans of the dry Tempra paint you mixed with water... eventually I got into drawing and sketching and found the good pencil crayons, way less setup required... And now in my "old age" (not quite 50) I'm turning to more useful crafts... one year everyone got oat-filled microwaveable heat packs for Xmas, another year I made coasters and trivets filled with crushed spices so when you set something warm on them, you got a lovely hint of Xmas spices, last year everyone got small drawstring bags with a magnet/clip sewn in to keep safety glasses or reading glasses from getting banged around and scratched, this year everyone's getting a selection of homemade soaps. If I were trying to use large wooden beads for a craft that's useful, something to put hot pots on so you don't wreck the counter or table is probably where I'd go with it, though not sure how well paint would react with the bottom of a hot pot so I'd probably use a stain instead. If you wanted to try hanging the larger ones, my suggestion would be to go through it again with another round or two of cord to fill the voids in the centre so the beads can't sag. A hanging beaded fruit basket (maybe reinforced with wire) or garlic/ginger pot might be a potential use for your hanging bag idea?
Salt dough or home made play dough to make Christmas ornaments. We made felt ones too. My mom also made macrame wall hangings with roving, huge beads, leather cord etc. She also made a great wall art piece out of those plastic rings that used to attach six packs of soda and spray paint.
I loved making beaded animals as a kid! And friendship bracelets with embroidery thread. Lite-brites and play-doh were fun. Then I got into cross-stitch as a tween and never looked back 😅
Latchhook was our craft. I was fortunate enough to have art class in middle school and we got to design our own pattern. Also, my Dad was into work working for a while. He made us wooden circles that we could paint whatever we wanted on it. I did a land scape. He made a US puzzle that when together was an American flag. That was how I learned the states. The puzzle pieces were the shapes of the states. And who could forget those foam shapes. Oh, my Aunt made the "dough" that you shaped and baked. So fun. I love this series. I love your channel and I don't even sew clothes. I still watch because you are so fun to watch. I am a quilter now. Thank you so much for sharing your crafts/art with us.
My sister use to make these back in the nineties, the “gapping” drove her crazy so she would weave a piece of sewing thread down the middle. They look so cute laying down it might not be worth the hassle 😊
The childhood craft I weirdly remember the most is woven pot holders! You got basically a square plastic frame with pegs, and a big bag of fabric loops. I made so many of those darn things, I wonder if my parents still have any in storage haha
You could use some embroidery floss to tie the cord from the different rows together on the larger/heavier ones to help them stay together when held upright or hung on the wall. This is making me excited to teach my kiddos all the little crafts I used to do 😆❤️
I made trivets for hot dishes with my grandma in this technique and we used sturdy glass beads to form squares with pretty patterns. I just got some very nostalgic memories of that so thank you!
90s kid here - lots of colouring and drawing, salt dough (although the baking step always failed lol), crochet when I was a bit older, ironing beads so so much
I am 59 and didn't have much craft kits as a child. My mom used to sew a bit, and knit and crochet beautifully. I sewed a lot of doll's clothes and learned to knit and crochet, but I didn't like it much then. I did like cross stitch very much. As an adult, I sew a lot and love crochet. I learned to make soap and liked that, too.
I think it started with geckos, because of the way the beads move. I was a teenager in the 90's, and the best part of those was the wavy fidget quality, but it looked like a cute little animal.
We didn't have these growing up but we did have other kits from time to time. The one that stuck with me was a French Knitting one. Taught everything you needed for knitting on the round combs and flat needles. I still knit to this day and have always enjoyed it so I'm so glad I received that kit when I was young 😊
I remember using plastic lacing. In high school, my mom would sign us up for classes at Michael's. I did shirt painting, fabric covered photo album, cake decorating, rubber stamps, latch hook, and needle punch embroidery. I taught my self how to sew and crochet in elementary school from books. I still do the needle punch embroidery and cake decorating occasionally.
I've never seen these before, and we were very crafty as kids, too. I don't know if it's a regional thing or age thing, but I had no idea these bead pets existed until today. For crafts we made things with clay like either salt dough or actual real painting and firing ceramics, we made lanyards, and I used to make necklaces and bracelets with tiny beads on a loom. I also crocheted a little but I didn't really get into crochet until I was an adult. We made clothes for dolls too. When I was a kid, pony beads were something little girls wore in braids in their hair.
This was such a fun pull back to childhood. Those kid crafting kits were the best presents growing up. Yes, to bead pets, plastic canvas, crocheting, friendship bracelets, and rubber stamping
The otters & puppy are adorable! I was a kid in the 70's, and remember doing paint-by-number kits, macrame bracelets, faux stained glass, spirograph, water color painting, coloring books, a little bit of sewing & a whole mess of stuff in Girl Scouts. Oh yes, also painting ceramics in 5th grade, and with my mom when she went to a weekly class.
With the ones that are gapping, you could add, by sewing, in some stabilizing stitches with an appropriate thread color, clear or maybe an accent color to make stripes in the design. It all depends on the end goal of the art piece. Great work! Grew up in the 90s as well, though these were never something I was personally interested in at the time.
I grew up in the 60's and 70's. I usually would get a kit of some kind at Christmas. There were craft kits by the gallors. My first kit was doing those pot holders on the loom, and it went from there. Pillowcase Embroidery kits, macrame kits, crewel kits, hook rug kits. You name it i probably did one.
I was a crafty kid in the '70's. I learned embroidery and at Christmas time we did DIY ornament kits where beads on straight pins are onto Styrofoam ina pattern. My sister, who is five years. Older than me,.hers were beautiful. Mine were less so.
Same era! Loved those. Probably parents now would think a craft with straight pins and tiny beads and sequins would be inappropriate for small children.
This is a single string concept that you can scale up to loom beading, which a lot of indigenous folks use for regalia and earrings and all sorts of beautiful things
These are Adorable! they are super cute laying down, but you could use some thread to tie the rows together if you want to hang it. I loved making these, most of our craft supplies growing up were hand me down odds and ends, somehow ended up with a bucket of pony beads i would basically treat like legos, making things and taking it apart, never actually keeping anything lol I saw a clip somewhere of someone making a fabric version of a paper chain the other day and i thought of these bead pets, when i saw your title i thought maybe you had! you could make a fabric one of your pup and he could use it as a bed 💜
While I do think the bead animals are pretty modern, the way that it’s strung up looks fairly similar to indigenous practices for jewelry and art. It very much did exist, and the modern design makes it more palatable for children. Think of how fondly you look back at the crafts you would do as children and then revisit and expand the crafts (with some of the skills you’ve learned as a child) as you got older! And they look great! 💜💜
We did these but in seed beads. I made a nice 3d cobra that could sit using its own rings. We mainly made various bracelets in different techniques. Crochet lace, knitting, sewing, seed beads, cross stitch embroidery, macrame, that's all. My father made me bracelets from his thin colored wires he used for electronics repair
The crafts I remember from being a kid were perler beads, bead friends, friendship bracelets, scrapbooking, painting, puffy paint clothing, putting gems on clothing(I can't remember what this is called), and coloring. I'm sure there are others that I am missing.
Ooh I remember making bead lizards too! Not very many though, I did a lot more painting and drawing, and made a lot of stuff out of fimo polymer clay. So many fimo dragons. I wonder if all the unused 15+ year old fimo in my parents basement is still good... I don't remember having many art kits, but I do know I did a rug hooking one that came with a lot of little bits of yarn and a butterfly pattern. I sewed little creatures out of felt, some of which I still have. And I made some clothes for my little rubber monster finger puppets. Vests and a hooded coat, and I made a saddle so they could ride my big plastic triceratops. I loved my monster finger puppets SO much! My favourite one was called Pink Guy and he had a brown leather vest (scrap of leather with 2 holes) and a bracelet (jump ring). The otters and the Links all turned out so cute! If I could I'd give you the big box of wooden beads I have from my uncle's beaded car seat cover that fell apart!
I remember those bead pets! No idea why the lizard was the "traditional" one, but it was always so cute! The main crafts I got into growing up were friendship bracelets (that I'm pretty sure were a form of macrame, though I didn't know that at the time), the woven pot holders made out of stretchy fabric loops, and flower pens
I loved the iron beads as a kid. The tiny plastic beads that you lay out and then iron and they all melt together! I also did friendship bracelets, drawing, play doh, puffy paint, cross stitch, blow pens (not sure if they make those still) Now im into quilting! And painting and coloring still lol
As far as modern kids' crafts I would have loved if they'd been around when I was a kid, Rainbow Loom is a super fascinating technique, years a similar part of the brain as fiber arts as far as I can tell.
For the otter, if you were to start out with two strands of strings (to make 4 cords to tie) you could attach the longer rows to join the gaping holes, by threading halfway along the row. They might have to be more narrow threads than the cord that you have, but it would work!
my mom used to get me a ton of klutz kits. it's how I learned crochet and knitting~ but I remember doing paper twirling, quilting, friendship bracelets, I loved them a ton even if most of them I didn't end up keeping as hobbies
I made bead pet earrings and sold them in middle school (glass seed beads and wire)… and to help with the flimsy-ness of the wider beads, you can just weave more cord vertically through the piece to connect the rows to each other in columns.
One of the crafts I did lost as a kid was the one where you make some sort of cord out of yarn with a wooden tube. I learned basic weaving and made some doll clothes, learned how to knit from my grandmother who very much did not enjoy that but knew how not, and made animals out of felt. Oh, and friendship bracelets of many kinds were also of staple, we also made many many bead bracelets at one point (the very basic kind). I also had a kit for candle making, for drawing with colored sand, I did some embroidery, clay and salt dough molding. Probably many more that I can't remember right now
@sallythekolcat Mine had 4 but I guess it would be just the same with 6, just larger. Yes, French knitting seems the English name, I'm French myself and was too lazy yesterday to look up the translation 🙃
You could stabilize the bigger otter by adding a smaller thread tying 2beads from one row, with 2beads from a lower row. Like in beading with square stitch. Just a tip to look into if you feel like it. ❤
I always wanted to learn how to make stuff like bead pets and friendship bracelets but could never get someone to teach me or get the supplies. Now youtube can teach me anything.❤❤
I grew up in a very craft-oriented family too. We lived on a farm and had sheep, so there were always a couple of special sheep whose wool we kept for ourselves, either because it was a longer staple, or a different color. We did spinning, weaving, knitting, and crocheting. Also my father had woodworking tools (mostly hand tools) in the basement, so we also often did wooden stuff. We didn't have much money, so I don't remember a lot of craft kits. Oh! But there was a glass cutter that was purchased to make glasses and things out of wine bottles. This would have been in the 70s, so max hippie vibes!
Oh, one more - papercrafts. As in making stars out of strips of paper, the Fröbel star, in particular. Not really a craft, per se, as it's just one thing, but I did so many of those and they still hang on our Christmas tree each year.
My sister and I did SO.MANY.CRAFTS as kids - I swear it was my mom's way of keeping us from bugging her during school breaks. I'm way older than you are, though, so we didn't have the variety of kits you had. We embroidered pillowcases, painted by number, learned to knit, crochet, cross stitch, needlepoint, and latch hook. We made a LOT of candles. Our favorite were the elaborate Christmas ornaments with beads, ribbons, and pins - I think those were Herschner's kits...
My first thought for a use with the wooden beads is a trivet. You could leave the big otter on the kitchen counter and put hot pots on him. Cute and a function!
I was just thinking about when my mom kept us busy on Christmas Eve making paper chains and was thinking about doing it just for fun. Definitely going to try it now. Thanks for the motivation!
These ended up so cute! For Link's eyes i think I would have made a darker brown and then painted on some white shine marks to make them stand out more. Also Matt asking if you wanted anything from the guitar shop made me laugh so hard 😂
I’m 53, i remember my aunt visiting when I was a child, we made bead pet earrings. From beads she brought from Mexico when visiting my grandfather. One thing I remember is pulling the thread up around the previous row to hold rows together to avoid sagging. For many years after that was my aunts go to gift for me for Christmas and when she visited.
"they're always dirty" about your glasses. Oh I feel you so hard on that, lol. The idea of going back to childhood crafts would be interesting. As always, wonderful to see another video from you. ❤
I used to make friendship bracelets when I was about 12 and stopped when I was around 15. Later, in my 30s, I bought embroidery floss for a project that never saw the light of day, and I asked myself if friendship bracelets were still a thing. Not only was it still a thing, but the patterns were so much more interesting! When I was a teen, I only could make cheverons and reversed cheverons (forwards and backwards knots). I didn't know about FB or BF knots, and even less about the alpha bracelets technique. (Internet wasn't much of a thing at that time). I've found a youtube channel with an easy enough tutorial for my rusted self, and got back to it from then. I've even developed my own techniques and style and that is how I cured a part of my depression :) (sorry if bad English, here's a potato 🥔)
They'd all be super cute as wall hangings. I think I'd either attach a stable backing or maybe even just glue the beads to each other (super glue? wood glue? epoxy? ...no idea what would be the best adhesive for this).
It's funny, I don't think I've every _really_ stopped crafting (besides maybe high school, because I spent ALL of my free time doing homework and being miserable lol), but this video _did_ remind me of how I used to love just kind of... making up crafts? I'd try to make useful gadgets a lot (I definitely do NOT have an engineer's brain, so that was usually a bust), would always try out whatever crafts my (also ADHD) mom was into at the time, but, at least for awhile, I was _really_ into making my own paper out of random recycled paper and dye and construction paper, etc.! I say "making up" crafts simply because I never really looked into how to do these things. I look forward to seeing what other childhood crafts you revisit!
Ooooo i loved my bead lizard keychain! The woven nylon potholders were fun. Shrinky dinks were interesting. The craft kit you laid out plastic beads and ironed to melt them together was a fun one too.
If you painted the eye beads a coat of clear nail varnish, or similar, over the darker brown, then they would read as eyes because they would be shiny next to the matt of all the 'fur' beads. Hope that makes sense. They all look brilliant! x
I was the Handicraft Director at a summer camp. During one parents weekends, one of the Dad's was intently working on a pony bead bracelet. Turns out it was his anniversary. He forgot. So, to buy himself some time, he was making his wife a "diamond tennis bracelet"
Inspired-I did get some upscale materials and made some kind of classy stuff...
BTW: his wife thought the tennis bracelet was hilarious and far more appropriate for unwrapping in the middle of the woods than the fine jewelry gift that was "waiting at home" (his wife was pretty certain that it was still waiting at the jewelry store)
Beadwork like this is a traditional Zulu craft. Zulu artists make the most gorgeous jewellery using this type of technique.
Thanks for the context. Now I have a rabbit hole to follow :D
Pay no attention to pedantor (me). In the US it is jewelry. The UK uses alllll the superfluous spelling and pronunciations.
@@e.keesey I'm a USian, and I like Jewellery better. It looks fancier, the way pieces of Jewellery do.
@@e.keesey oh have i got something to tell you about French
Absolutely love their collars and hand jewelry.
The vinegar-y smell is really common in items that are shipped via cargo container, it's a preventative spray against both fungus and pests, while the items are sitting for months in a dark shipping container with no ventilation.
Fascinating!
That's interesting... my daughter got a kinetic sand play bin, and the colorful sands smell fine but the naturally colored sand smells very strongly of vinegar. Maybe just that type was shipped via cargo ship??
Came here to find the answer when Charlie mentioned
@@CWorgen5732perhaps the process of coloring the other sands had anti fungal/mold properties and only the natural sand needed the vinegar smelling process?
@@CWorgen5732 Perhaps the colourful sand is synthetic and so mould and such isn't a problem? 🤔
I was a child in the 80's. Safety pins with seed beads were very popular to trade and put on your shoe laces. Also knotted friendship bracelets made with embroidery floss.
So. Many. Friendship. Bracelets.
We did safety pin seed bead flags and sold out at the holiday craft fair.
@@Tippler0611Yeah I have an american flag pin in that style
Well now I wanna make one tiny with seed beads
I made myself seed bead lizards earrings and they are wonderful
Klutz had a kit like this, with wire instead of cord. It's delightful and you totally should
Suggestion: use string if it's meant to move (earrings, etc.) or wire of it will be wiggled less (a still decoration on a wall, etc.) The ones I've made to wear with wire always break eventually. Glass seed beads get heavy after a while.
Do it!!! Its so fun and the texture of the seed beads feels so nice
My sister and I used to make little lizard earrings! Highly recommend!
Very elegant edit at 0:28 going from the store and re-entering your room. Subliminal. Very cool.
Oh the crafty things we did in the 70s!!! I remember being shocked by the advances in kits for 80s kids and 90s kids. Things that stand out in my memory: Macrame belt kit, Wrapping colored thread around pins on velvet cardboard bases to make images (String Art), Paint by Number kits, Potholder kits, Embroidery kits, Cross stitch kits, Needlepoint kits, Latchhook kits, and at camp - making those plastic lanyard woven cords, then in school teaching each other to make knotted friendship bracelets (basically miniature macrame)
Remember those lanyards made of flat plastic thread? I remember making so many of those in summer camp. Also latch hook, shrinky dinks, paper fashion dolls, a knitting machine that broke on the first use, basically any klutz craft kit I could get my hands on from the toy store. So many crafts that I want to revisit myself. Also my aunt brought to Thanksgiving this year a rag wreath she was making by just stabbing precut pieces of fabric into a straw wreath with a screwdriver. Looked very fun and cathartic.
I LIVED for Klutz books!!!
Scoubidous! The plastic thread thingys. At least, I think that's how you spell it.
I guess the wooden version of it could be a great coaster or something to put your hot pots/bowls/kettle on? I think we had something like that in the kitchen when I was little and it was adorable, maybe you'll find this idea fun too!
They would make wonderful and adorable coasters!
We had a square hot pad made this way, out of corks from wine bottles. but they had also woven the cotton threads through crosswise.
it was stable enough to throw as a frisbee.
I was thinking the same.
@@sallythekolcat ooh, we had those too! It sure was fun to throw it as a frisbee, I agree :D
those came out very cute, but I can't stop laughing at Matt at the end asking if you wanted anything from guitar center. I agree with him, your loss lol
A 40 year old Les Paul would have been a fun answer. :)
I was a child of the 60’s. I loved “sewing cards” like a dot-to-dot with yarn. I also loved weaving potholders on a loom and making mosaic pictures with braid you glued down following a design and filled the spaces with glitter or crushed rock, like aquarium gravel in colors. I always sewed from a very young age. I later learned knitting. When my daughter was young we did the bead pets. She was in 3rd grade when her oldest brother left for college. She hid bead animal in all his boxes!
You know what I loved? Shaving crayons and melting between wax paper! I wish there was an adult equivalent.😸 I sew also, have since my early teens and enjoy it and occasionally hate it at the same time.
There's a whole book of embroidery stitches made like sewing cards for grownups, to teach different stitches. I found it by accident on Amazon
The pearls bag thing make me immediatly want to put a plant in it!!! I will definitly make some for my suculents, thanks for the idea ^u^
Charlie: "Do you wanna watch paint dry".
Me: "Yes".
😂
Hard same.😊
Paint by Number kits; Embroidery; Knitting; Crocheting; I made a stuffed clown doll using a pattern on the back of the fiberfill bag; woven potholders; pom pom poncho. Never did beads as a kid, but later in life I did a fair amount of bead work and wire jewelry crafting--all of my earrings I made myself, including the ear wires. I taught knitting and crochet as an older adult and crochet every day.
And many other things . . .
A big childhood craft for us was "window colour". At least that was its German name. So the plasticy transparent paints that you stick to the window afterwards. HUGE! Expescially with colouring in pages to paint over. Every season new window decor! Yeah! :D
Also: potato stamps, salt dough shapes, marbling things like easter eggs with nail poish on top of warm water (does that have a name?), making paper lanterns with transparent paper. Those ironing beads and in my time (early 2000s): scooby doo bands. They smelled so much like cheap plastic.
Water marbling! It's also called hydro dipping. Haven't done it with easter eggs before, though it makes a lot of sense. I might have to try it one year instead of just dyeing them :)
That was so cute! I immediately thought of shrinky dinks and friendship bracelets I did as a kid and I now want to do all the childhood crafts too!
Now I want to do shrinky dink needle minders!
I was a mother in the 90s. I now understand why I hadn't seen bead pets when I was younger. I'm not sure but I may have seen them in late 80s. My cute kids have made them.
I did latchhook. My grandma taught me to crochet. Did cross stitch and tried embroidery. There were a lot of things we did with my son in the 90s. I have also done those with my kids.
Your wood beads made excellent pets. Very cute! Trivets are what I was thinking of with the otter and then you said it.
I loved those plastic beads you melt using your iron and wax paper ❤❤ cute teddy bears and turtles and stuff like that. Even Christmas ornaments
I love a series idea like this! Also I love that Charlie also watches Pottery to the People. Both channels are Delightful!
Love Pottery for the People. I so want kiln.
Although given after the newness wore off, I bet it would end up where I store my stash of beads (including pony beads, glass beads, and Parker beads), Latch hook supplies, and candlemaking supplies...etc.
But I so want a kiln and clay.
Name suggestions:
Comeback Crafts
Nostalgia Notions
or Notions of Nostalgia
Throwback Knacks
Retro Crafts
Modern Memories
I'm just spitballing some names. It's funny you bring this up, because I've been thinking about making a giant gecko out of hand made fabric beads as a giant throw pillow. And I found the same crochet geckos!
I really like Comeback Crafts!
@@frogem209 Thanks!
A big 90's/aughties craft I remember loving was quilling and making things with mini terracotta pots and wood beds. I specifically remember doing a bunch of little penguins with the upside down pot for the body/belly
Nostalgia Crafts. We did a lot of crafts: Perler Beads, tie dye, friendship bracelets, those plastic lanyards bracelets, and making play houses out of cardboard boxes (stuff my mother liked to do with us) but not really kits. I don't think art & craft kits were the same as they are now when I was a kid (early 80s), it was completely different when I was teen. The only kit I clearly remember is getting one of the loop potholder looms. We also got introduced to a lot of crafts in school and after school programs so we already knew we liked something before we got our own supplies. My mom did care for kits as much as letting us figure it out on our own.
A craft that I did when I was young and still do 30 years later is origami. It was great. You didn't need a lot of stuff, just paper, and could do so many things... I still have my first origami book and still cherish it ! ❤
Thank you for your videos. They're always interesting and fun. ☺️
@@mareene6803 Oh yes, origami ! I knew how to do a few basic things as a child but got more into it in my last year of high school because of a friend who would often do them in class. The teachers wouldn't mind because she was quiet and listening, and she would often let things she had done on the table, so they often picked them up to keep them 😁 Then there were both of us making fidget toys with many simple pieces folded together ^^ I still have them, along with an entire rabbit family made by her and stars with schools paper with her handwriting. Her boyfriend did even more complex pieces that were quite big with lots of tiny details. And they had origami cranes evrywhere from various sizes and colors at their wedding for decoration. Really want to get back into it now :)
Nobody in my family was very creative, but I did ask for craft kits for Christmas. My mother and grandmother crocheted, but that was about the extent of it. When I was very young l, around seven, my grandmother taught me to crochet just in a straight line. I would spend hours and hours to try to make great big long line so that I could, you know, tie it all up together to make it look like a normal crocheted object. I guess she never taught me anything other than a simple chain stitch so I didn’t know about double crochet and things lol. I also recall receiving a craft kit with a purse that I could embroider something pretty on the front. I can’t remember them all, but I got one every year for quite a few years. There were a few years when my mother made our clothing with a sewing machine, but she didn’t do that for very long, and didn’t really seem to so much after that. I loved sewing with my little Barbie, sewing machine, and I made a lot of doll clothes over the years. As an adult, I started sewing just to save money. I would make my own curtains and crochet blankets and things that I needed. I have still not graduated to really making clothing effectively, but I’m getting close lol. My most important craft that I do now is Quilting. I have hand pieced one quilt, pieced another one on the machine that I hand quilted, and now I’m working on my third one which I think will be done all with the machine, except I embroidered some designs on some of the squares. So it’s always something with me.
One kit I remember (and I’m a lot older than you) was the dipped wire flowers. So, you make a petal shape out of wire, then you dip it into this viscus, brightly colored, petroleum-smelling liquid which made a thin film in the wire shape. You let it dry overnight and wire all the petals together to form a flower. The petals all dried semi-see-through… like glass. Very pretty! I’m not sure such a thing is around anymore…probably causes cancer.
I wonder if it was a type of resin? Sounds like fun (even if maybe toxic).
Oh my god I did this!! And I had completely forgotten about it! I remember it looked so cool and felt really smooth once dry, but if you didn't do it just right you'd end up with holes... Okay, that's going on the list to look up!
I think I've seen that on Pinterest somewhere! No idea what the liquid was though, I think something I couldn't easily get (or it is something that doesn't have an easy to find equal here in the not-USA).
Maybe I pinned it? Should I check?
Okay so I checked and the one I saved used 2 coats of wood glue (1 dipped, second painted on) and then painted them with nail polish. So that wouldn't be transparent (unless transparent nail polish? Or maybe watered down with acetone?) but they could still be very pretty.
Nail polish works too
I totally feel this. My mom was very "crafty" as well. Too many to list but she was particularly talented at crochet. The one craft that has been my nemesis.
Cooking was also her go-to as we got older.
When I was expecting my third child in the summer of 1998 I kept the other two kids entertained with bead animals. They loved it.
Your love for your mother shines through and that is lovely :)
It was the 1960s… we made wire loops and dipped them into clear, colored toxic goo that definitely contained toluene. It made flower petals and got us high AF 😂 this was kid friendly crafting back then
It's a great idea, remaking crafts from childhood into more grownup concepts. I remember the thread friendship bracelets everyone made way back in high school in the 80s. Not the lanyard ones, the ones with embridery floss, which I suspect you may have a bit of in your stash already!
Pearler beads were one of my favorite childhood crafts. You can make boxes out of them and 3D things, too, if you layer them. It's not something I ever tried, though. The little idea catalogs were always so fun
My mom was a CampFire Girl leader. She came up with so many different crafts for indoors and outdoors. Cooking sausage and eggs over a campfire in a paper bag. Hobo stew in a metal coffee can. We made necklaces from clear marbles that she heated in a cast-iron skillet, plunged them in ice water so they cracked in the middle and attached them to jewelry findings.
We did a lot of felt crafts. Built bird houses out of popsicle sticks and so much more.
I also came from a crafty family, dad mostly did woodwork and designing, mom was a potter by trade (handbuilding rather than using a wheel) till repetitive strain injuries made her give it up in the late 90s, she still does flower arrangement, her gardens are beautiful, and I may have inspired her to get back into sewing again, but she was always brimming with little craft ideas when I was a kid, though getting a kit of something was rare, there was actually a small independently-owned craft and craft supply shop in our town so we got the stuff and did the thing. She did macrame as well but never taught me, but she did get me started in beadwork, and I made a lot of jewelry, some of it in the same style you are using for your bead pets though I never did those, some with a bead loom, some in other styles that I'd never seen but turned out to be traditional somewhere, some methods I figured out that I've still never seen anyone else do. The kits I remember getting were where you arranged those plastic beads into a metal frame then melted them in the oven, and one where you had all these tiny little tumbled rock bits in different colours and were supposed to glue them onto the card in specific colours and arrangements, the one I remember was a Monarch butterfly bit it was very time-consuming and fiddly and I'm honestly not sure I finished it before I'm assuming my brother inevitably destroyed it as he eventually did with most things. I still have my calligraphy set somewhere which I think was an attempt to correct my atrocious handwriting, but being left-handed and not having a lefty nib, it was never very much fun because it always came out wrong, at this point I'm seriously considering teaching my right hand to do calligraphy, because at this point I'm practically ambidextrous anyways... Glass etching, weaving on a little tabletop loom about the size of a typewriter, candlemaking, baking, and crocheting to name just a few of the crafty things we did... I learned to knit too but was never able to grasp the concept of purl though, so I gave up and tried crochet instead, and have stuck with that and forgotten anything I know about knitting. One of my childhood favourite things to do was painting, but it was always such a production to set up and so messy that it was very rare that we got to do it, but even so Mom had cans of the dry Tempra paint you mixed with water... eventually I got into drawing and sketching and found the good pencil crayons, way less setup required...
And now in my "old age" (not quite 50) I'm turning to more useful crafts... one year everyone got oat-filled microwaveable heat packs for Xmas, another year I made coasters and trivets filled with crushed spices so when you set something warm on them, you got a lovely hint of Xmas spices, last year everyone got small drawstring bags with a magnet/clip sewn in to keep safety glasses or reading glasses from getting banged around and scratched, this year everyone's getting a selection of homemade soaps.
If I were trying to use large wooden beads for a craft that's useful, something to put hot pots on so you don't wreck the counter or table is probably where I'd go with it, though not sure how well paint would react with the bottom of a hot pot so I'd probably use a stain instead. If you wanted to try hanging the larger ones, my suggestion would be to go through it again with another round or two of cord to fill the voids in the centre so the beads can't sag.
A hanging beaded fruit basket (maybe reinforced with wire) or garlic/ginger pot might be a potential use for your hanging bag idea?
Salt dough or home made play dough to make Christmas ornaments. We made felt ones too. My mom also made macrame wall hangings with roving, huge beads, leather cord etc. She also made a great wall art piece out of those plastic rings that used to attach six packs of soda and spray paint.
I loved making beaded animals as a kid! And friendship bracelets with embroidery thread. Lite-brites and play-doh were fun. Then I got into cross-stitch as a tween and never looked back 😅
My top three kiddie crafts: potholders made from old nylon pantyhose, dream catchers made from popsicle sticks, and lanyards made with plastic string!
Latchhook was our craft. I was fortunate enough to have art class in middle school and we got to design our own pattern. Also, my Dad was into work working for a while. He made us wooden circles that we could paint whatever we wanted on it. I did a land scape. He made a US puzzle that when together was an American flag. That was how I learned the states. The puzzle pieces were the shapes of the states. And who could forget those foam shapes. Oh, my Aunt made the "dough" that you shaped and baked. So fun. I love this series. I love your channel and I don't even sew clothes. I still watch because you are so fun to watch. I am a quilter now. Thank you so much for sharing your crafts/art with us.
My sister use to make these back in the nineties, the “gapping” drove her crazy so she would weave a piece of sewing thread down the middle. They look so cute laying down it might not be worth the hassle 😊
We did all the crafts too. One of my favs was the milk carton ice candles, also crepe paper/tissue paper flowers and so many more.
Craft from the past! Bead pets were great and still are amazing. Love your videos.
craft from the past - excellent name!
The childhood craft I weirdly remember the most is woven pot holders! You got basically a square plastic frame with pegs, and a big bag of fabric loops. I made so many of those darn things, I wonder if my parents still have any in storage haha
You could use some embroidery floss to tie the cord from the different rows together on the larger/heavier ones to help them stay together when held upright or hung on the wall.
This is making me excited to teach my kiddos all the little crafts I used to do 😆❤️
I made trivets for hot dishes with my grandma in this technique and we used sturdy glass beads to form squares with pretty patterns. I just got some very nostalgic memories of that so thank you!
90s kid here - lots of colouring and drawing, salt dough (although the baking step always failed lol), crochet when I was a bit older, ironing beads so so much
ROFL!!! Casually walks into the other room (Michaels) and gets craft kit. 😂
😂😂😂
you can use embroidery floss and weave it through the rows, to hold them together when hanging.
I am 59 and didn't have much craft kits as a child. My mom used to sew a bit, and knit and crochet beautifully. I sewed a lot of doll's clothes and learned to knit and crochet, but I didn't like it much then. I did like cross stitch very much. As an adult, I sew a lot and love crochet. I learned to make soap and liked that, too.
If you wanted to hang it, you could glue the beads together! These are so cute!!! ❤
This was very comforting and whimsical. I had such a good time on the journey you guided us through 💚🌲
I think it started with geckos, because of the way the beads move. I was a teenager in the 90's, and the best part of those was the wavy fidget quality, but it looked like a cute little animal.
So many childhood memories! My family was much like yours and we did a ton of kids crafts. I’m so happy to get to follow along with your journey ❤
We didn't have these growing up but we did have other kits from time to time. The one that stuck with me was a French Knitting one. Taught everything you needed for knitting on the round combs and flat needles. I still knit to this day and have always enjoyed it so I'm so glad I received that kit when I was young 😊
I remember using plastic lacing.
In high school, my mom would sign us up for classes at Michael's. I did shirt painting, fabric covered photo album, cake decorating, rubber stamps, latch hook, and needle punch embroidery.
I taught my self how to sew and crochet in elementary school from books.
I still do the needle punch embroidery and cake decorating occasionally.
Pottery, painting ceramics, noodles art (or beans and seed) decoupage, stamping, calligraphy, and lots of sewing
Ii forgot:we also painted a lot of those wooden Christmas ornaments and other little wooden things
I've never seen these before, and we were very crafty as kids, too. I don't know if it's a regional thing or age thing, but I had no idea these bead pets existed until today. For crafts we made things with clay like either salt dough or actual real painting and firing ceramics, we made lanyards, and I used to make necklaces and bracelets with tiny beads on a loom. I also crocheted a little but I didn't really get into crochet until I was an adult. We made clothes for dolls too. When I was a kid, pony beads were something little girls wore in braids in their hair.
This was such a fun pull back to childhood. Those kid crafting kits were the best presents growing up. Yes, to bead pets, plastic canvas, crocheting, friendship bracelets, and rubber stamping
The otters & puppy are adorable! I was a kid in the 70's, and remember doing paint-by-number kits, macrame bracelets, faux stained glass, spirograph, water color painting, coloring books, a little bit of sewing & a whole mess of stuff in Girl Scouts. Oh yes, also painting ceramics in 5th grade, and with my mom when she went to a weekly class.
With the ones that are gapping, you could add, by sewing, in some stabilizing stitches with an appropriate thread color, clear or maybe an accent color to make stripes in the design. It all depends on the end goal of the art piece. Great work! Grew up in the 90s as well, though these were never something I was personally interested in at the time.
I grew up in the 60's and 70's. I usually would get a kit of some kind at Christmas. There were craft kits by the gallors. My first kit was doing those pot holders on the loom, and it went from there. Pillowcase Embroidery kits, macrame kits, crewel kits, hook rug kits. You name it i probably did one.
"Pastime powerup" or something with those words could work. Or like... Kidcrafts grown up
This is so much fun 😊
I was a crafty kid in the '70's. I learned embroidery and at Christmas time we did DIY ornament kits where beads on straight pins are onto Styrofoam ina pattern. My sister, who is five years. Older than me,.hers were beautiful. Mine were less so.
Same era! Loved those. Probably parents now would think a craft with straight pins and tiny beads and sequins would be inappropriate for small children.
This is a single string concept that you can scale up to loom beading, which a lot of indigenous folks use for regalia and earrings and all sorts of beautiful things
My mother had a ceramics shop when I was little and we also did all sorts of needle crafts
These are Adorable! they are super cute laying down, but you could use some thread to tie the rows together if you want to hang it.
I loved making these, most of our craft supplies growing up were hand me down odds and ends, somehow ended up with a bucket of pony beads i would basically treat like legos, making things and taking it apart, never actually keeping anything lol
I saw a clip somewhere of someone making a fabric version of a paper chain the other day and i thought of these bead pets, when i saw your title i thought maybe you had! you could make a fabric one of your pup and he could use it as a bed 💜
While I do think the bead animals are pretty modern, the way that it’s strung up looks fairly similar to indigenous practices for jewelry and art. It very much did exist, and the modern design makes it more palatable for children.
Think of how fondly you look back at the crafts you would do as children and then revisit and expand the crafts (with some of the skills you’ve learned as a child) as you got older!
And they look great! 💜💜
I did about a million of the loomed potholders when I was a kid.
ahhh how cool!! love the projects you made :)
Thank you for the inspiration!
We did these but in seed beads. I made a nice 3d cobra that could sit using its own rings. We mainly made various bracelets in different techniques. Crochet lace, knitting, sewing, seed beads, cross stitch embroidery, macrame, that's all. My father made me bracelets from his thin colored wires he used for electronics repair
The crafts I remember from being a kid were perler beads, bead friends, friendship bracelets, scrapbooking, painting, puffy paint clothing, putting gems on clothing(I can't remember what this is called), and coloring. I'm sure there are others that I am missing.
Ooh I remember making bead lizards too! Not very many though, I did a lot more painting and drawing, and made a lot of stuff out of fimo polymer clay. So many fimo dragons. I wonder if all the unused 15+ year old fimo in my parents basement is still good...
I don't remember having many art kits, but I do know I did a rug hooking one that came with a lot of little bits of yarn and a butterfly pattern.
I sewed little creatures out of felt, some of which I still have. And I made some clothes for my little rubber monster finger puppets. Vests and a hooded coat, and I made a saddle so they could ride my big plastic triceratops. I loved my monster finger puppets SO much!
My favourite one was called Pink Guy and he had a brown leather vest (scrap of leather with 2 holes) and a bracelet (jump ring).
The otters and the Links all turned out so cute!
If I could I'd give you the big box of wooden beads I have from my uncle's beaded car seat cover that fell apart!
I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and I remember making a lot of loom potholders and latch hook rugs.
Me, too!
I remember those bead pets! No idea why the lizard was the "traditional" one, but it was always so cute!
The main crafts I got into growing up were friendship bracelets (that I'm pretty sure were a form of macrame, though I didn't know that at the time), the woven pot holders made out of stretchy fabric loops, and flower pens
I loved the iron beads as a kid. The tiny plastic beads that you lay out and then iron and they all melt together!
I also did friendship bracelets, drawing, play doh, puffy paint, cross stitch, blow pens (not sure if they make those still)
Now im into quilting! And painting and coloring still lol
@@abbyburke9815 Loved them too (although I mostly did them as an ephemeral thing and rarely got my parents to iron them)
Crafty nostalgia would be a cool name for the series
As far as modern kids' crafts I would have loved if they'd been around when I was a kid, Rainbow Loom is a super fascinating technique, years a similar part of the brain as fiber arts as far as I can tell.
I love otters! So nice to see a craft with them :)
For the otter, if you were to start out with two strands of strings (to make 4 cords to tie) you could attach the longer rows to join the gaping holes, by threading halfway along the row. They might have to be more narrow threads than the cord that you have, but it would work!
latch hook rug, tissue paper flower, layered sand jar, folded paper shapes/origami, paper dolls, coloring book, fuzzy poster, friendship bracelets,
my mom used to get me a ton of klutz kits. it's how I learned crochet and knitting~ but I remember doing paper twirling, quilting, friendship bracelets, I loved them a ton even if most of them I didn't end up keeping as hobbies
I made bead pet earrings and sold them in middle school (glass seed beads and wire)… and to help with the flimsy-ness of the wider beads, you can just weave more cord vertically through the piece to connect the rows to each other in columns.
One of the crafts I did lost as a kid was the one where you make some sort of cord out of yarn with a wooden tube. I learned basic weaving and made some doll clothes, learned how to knit from my grandmother who very much did not enjoy that but knew how not, and made animals out of felt. Oh, and friendship bracelets of many kinds were also of staple, we also made many many bead bracelets at one point (the very basic kind). I also had a kit for candle making, for drawing with colored sand, I did some embroidery, clay and salt dough molding. Probably many more that I can't remember right now
did the wooden tube had 4 or 6 pegs in the top? they have many names, but i find 'french knitter' the easiest to google.
@sallythekolcat Mine had 4 but I guess it would be just the same with 6, just larger. Yes, French knitting seems the English name, I'm French myself and was too lazy yesterday to look up the translation 🙃
You could stabilize the bigger otter by adding a smaller thread tying 2beads from one row, with 2beads from a lower row. Like in beading with square stitch. Just a tip to look into if you feel like it. ❤
I always wanted to learn how to make stuff like bead pets and friendship bracelets but could never get someone to teach me or get the supplies. Now youtube can teach me anything.❤❤
I grew up in a very craft-oriented family too. We lived on a farm and had sheep, so there were always a couple of special sheep whose wool we kept for ourselves, either because it was a longer staple, or a different color. We did spinning, weaving, knitting, and crocheting. Also my father had woodworking tools (mostly hand tools) in the basement, so we also often did wooden stuff. We didn't have much money, so I don't remember a lot of craft kits. Oh! But there was a glass cutter that was purchased to make glasses and things out of wine bottles. This would have been in the 70s, so max hippie vibes!
Oh, one more - papercrafts. As in making stars out of strips of paper, the Fröbel star, in particular. Not really a craft, per se, as it's just one thing, but I did so many of those and they still hang on our Christmas tree each year.
My sister and I did SO.MANY.CRAFTS as kids - I swear it was my mom's way of keeping us from bugging her during school breaks. I'm way older than you are, though, so we didn't have the variety of kits you had. We embroidered pillowcases, painted by number, learned to knit, crochet, cross stitch, needlepoint, and latch hook. We made a LOT of candles. Our favorite were the elaborate Christmas ornaments with beads, ribbons, and pins - I think those were Herschner's kits...
Soooo excited for this series!
My first thought for a use with the wooden beads is a trivet. You could leave the big otter on the kitchen counter and put hot pots on him. Cute and a function!
You could use them as trivets - imagine your otter holding a little pie dish or something - cute!
If I recall correctly, for larger pieces it was common to connect the cords by sewing vertically with thread.
Yes, I remember same thing, and I would do it on smaller pieces as well if I would use them as keychains, it was more secure with 2 separate strings.
I was just thinking about when my mom kept us busy on Christmas Eve making paper chains and was thinking about doing it just for fun. Definitely going to try it now. Thanks for the motivation!
These ended up so cute! For Link's eyes i think I would have made a darker brown and then painted on some white shine marks to make them stand out more. Also Matt asking if you wanted anything from the guitar shop made me laugh so hard 😂
I’m 53, i remember my aunt visiting when I was a child, we made bead pet earrings. From beads she brought from Mexico when visiting my grandfather. One thing I remember is pulling the thread up around the previous row to hold rows together to avoid sagging. For many years after that was my aunts go to gift for me for Christmas and when she visited.
Came to say the same - connect the rows to counteract the sagging👍
"they're always dirty" about your glasses. Oh I feel you so hard on that, lol. The idea of going back to childhood crafts would be interesting. As always, wonderful to see another video from you. ❤
I used to make friendship bracelets when I was about 12 and stopped when I was around 15. Later, in my 30s, I bought embroidery floss for a project that never saw the light of day, and I asked myself if friendship bracelets were still a thing. Not only was it still a thing, but the patterns were so much more interesting! When I was a teen, I only could make cheverons and reversed cheverons (forwards and backwards knots). I didn't know about FB or BF knots, and even less about the alpha bracelets technique. (Internet wasn't much of a thing at that time). I've found a youtube channel with an easy enough tutorial for my rusted self, and got back to it from then. I've even developed my own techniques and style and that is how I cured a part of my depression :)
(sorry if bad English, here's a potato 🥔)
They'd all be super cute as wall hangings. I think I'd either attach a stable backing or maybe even just glue the beads to each other (super glue? wood glue? epoxy? ...no idea what would be the best adhesive for this).
It's funny, I don't think I've every _really_ stopped crafting (besides maybe high school, because I spent ALL of my free time doing homework and being miserable lol), but this video _did_ remind me of how I used to love just kind of... making up crafts? I'd try to make useful gadgets a lot (I definitely do NOT have an engineer's brain, so that was usually a bust), would always try out whatever crafts my (also ADHD) mom was into at the time, but, at least for awhile, I was _really_ into making my own paper out of random recycled paper and dye and construction paper, etc.! I say "making up" crafts simply because I never really looked into how to do these things. I look forward to seeing what other childhood crafts you revisit!
Ooooo i loved my bead lizard keychain! The woven nylon potholders were fun. Shrinky dinks were interesting. The craft kit you laid out plastic beads and ironed to melt them together was a fun one too.
I think one of my nieces is getting a bead pet kit for Christmas, Thanks, Charlie!