Stop!!! Don’t buy the messy plastic Easter grass. Try some of these green alternatives. 1. Shredded paper. You can let your imagination run wild with what paper to use. Some ideas are newspaper, used wrapping paper, magazines, tissue paper, junk mail and the list goes on and on. If you have a paper shredder, you can simply run the paper through and ta da! you have easter grass. If not, you could use scissors or a paper cutter to cut skinny strips. 2. Raffia. Raffia comes …

With some old wine corks and an exacto knife, you can make your own little stamps. Start with dry corks, an exacto knife with a fine point and a cutting board. It is no surprise that this project is best done by an adult with a steady hand. Start by drawing your desired shape on the top of the cork. Simple shapes work best. Now, slowly and carefully cut along the border of your shape. I made lots of little cuts going up and down …

New crayons get all of the love. Who wants to color with broken old blunt crayons? Not my kids! Here is a fun project for upcycling all of those broken crayons. This works great on a very hot and sunny day but can also be done inside with the help of an oven. Start by sorting out a pile of broken crayons. You can either mix and match or keep in similar color families. I like monochromatic so we made our crayons out of the “red family.” …

Show your family and friends your love of upcycling by decorating your gifts with these upcycled magazine bows. Start with a thin magazine or catalog. The kind that has stables in the middle instead of a glue binding. You can make two or three bows from each magazine depending on the number of staples. Open the magazine to the center and cut a strip the width of the magazine with the staple in the middle. It should look like this: Using a pencil, curl each strip toward …