How to Make a Button Wind Chime That Actually Makes a Decent Sound

Finished button wind chime hanging on a porch

Every button wind chime tutorial online shows you a cute photo and then completely skips the part where cheap plastic buttons clacking together sound less like a gentle summer breeze and more like someone shaking a bag of Scrabble tiles. So let\’s fix that before you start drilling holes into your grandmother\’s button tin. The…

How to Drill a Hole in a Seashell Without Cracking It

Hand using a rotary tool to drill a hole into a seashell on a towel

You found the perfect shell on your last beach trip. Smooth, glossy, exactly the right size for a pendant or wind chime piece. Then you drill it and it splits in half like a bad walnut. If this has happened to you, it’s not because you’re bad at crafts — it’s because shells are basically…

Felt Cat Brooches You Can Whip Up Before International Cat Day

Craft supplies for making felt cat brooches laid out on a table

International Cat Day lands on August 8, which means you’ve got about 24 hours to either scramble for a gift for the cat person in your life or accept that you’re the cat person and this is for you. Either way, felt cat brooches are the move. No sewing machine, no pattern-drafting meltdown, and you…

How to Make Button Bracelets That Actually Stay on a Kid’s Wrist

Assorted buttons and elastic cord laid out for making bracelets

Every summer craft box eventually produces a pile of button bracelets that snap, slide off, or unravel by the second wear. It’s usually not the buttons’ fault. It’s the elastic cord, the knot, or the sizing math nobody bothered to do. Fix those three things and you’ve got a bracelet that survives sprinklers, monkey bars,…

How to Make Felt Monster Bookmarks That Kids Actually Use

Felt monster corner bookmarks clipped onto book pages

Back-to-school shopping season is in full swing, and somewhere between the pencil pouches and the mandatory glue stick multipack, there’s always room for one thing that costs almost nothing and gets used every single day: a bookmark that doesn’t slide out of the book the second you close it. Corner bookmarks solve that problem because…