Bead Art & Jewelry Supplies: Cord, Thread & Wire

As someone whose hobby is handmade crafts, particularly scrapbooks, I’ve learned firsthand how expensive art supply stores can be. Being original and artistic shouldn’t stop you from taking advantage of the ways I’ve found to save on your supplies.

1. Should you decide to blow the dust bunnies off your old magazine collection, you have several options for finally getting some use of it. I really enjoy the method of cutting out various colors and sizes of letters to make quotes or sayings. To get a cool retro feel, you can cut out letters from the cover page, different ads, and article titles and combine them all .

Cute pictures and designs to use in visual projects may be in old magazines. I also like to use the pages from fashion spreads as background pages for my scrapbooks. These universally possess strong themes, with hardly any (or no) writing. If they do have some writing, you can always cover it up with a picture or other design.

B: A real good idea is to use search engines to find graphics when scrap-booking. When I began to put together a scrapbook for my daughter, I searched the internet for phrases like "baby girl" to find appropriate graphics to include. Not only did I find a lot of cute stuff, I also saved a ton of money!

If you take the time to do different searches on your search engine you can find some designs or ideas for your project. Plenty of results which you can print out and use in your projects will be found by you. I’d suggest you only use these graphics for personal purposes though, since some may have copyrights on them. As long as they’re used only within your personal crafts, that shouldn’t be a problem.

The lack of a printer should not stop you as they are readily available for your use at your local library or school for a small fee. You’ll save tons of money over buying designs and stickers from an art supply store.

• Most people do not know that you can make your own glue instead of buying it from the store. Once you figure out how much glue you will need, mix together one part flour to one part water. Once you’ve reached the consistency of a paste, you can quit mixing it up.

Don’t make the glue until you are ready to use it because it will get moldy if left to sit. This must be left to dry totally after it is used; it is very good to use for any kind of paper project.

You can always add glitter to glue and then apply it like paint to decorate things.

• There are a lot of cool crafts out there which call for some type of modeling clay. Instead of splurging on the stuff at the store, you can make it right in your kitchen with ingredients that you’ve probably already got. The ingredients include: 1 cup flour; 1 tablespoon oil; 2 tablespoons cream of tartar; 1/2 cup salt; 1 cup water. Cook all of the ingredients for approximately three minutes after mixing them together in a big pan. Let it cool, and store it in an airtight container in the refrigerator until you plan to use it. The clay will dry up. So make sure the container is air tight.

5. Explore - You’ll find materials everywhere! Everything has a use, and you can make masks with scissors and crayons or markers or use a large pizza box for a collage, decorating it with dried, painted pieces of pasta you glue on.

You can find many crafting ideas around your house if you look with your imagination.

Below are the collection of great discounts on barely used Bead Art & Jewelry Supplies: Cord, Thread & Wire: