Drawing & Painting: Pens & Markers

I am an avid scrap-booker and love creating homemade crafts, so I know that buying supplies from art supply retail stores can be quite expensive. This should give you some good ideas for ways to save on art supplies while still maintaining your creative edge.

• Finally the huge stack of magazines that’s been accumulating under your bed can now be put to use in a lot of different ways. A technique I love is to cut out different sized and colored letters and make sayings or quotes. Check the front and back covers, as well as the ads and titles of articles. When you put all these together, you have a unique design with a retro look.

You can also look through old magazines for cute pictures and graphic designs to incorporate into collages, scrapbooks, or any other visual project. I also like to use the pages from fashion spreads as background pages for my scrapbooks. They truly follow a theme and don’t have too much writing on them. Unwanted writing can easily be covered with a picture or other design.

• 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. I found a lot of cute stuff and saved!

If you take the time to do different searches on your search engine you can find some designs or ideas for your project. You can get plenty of ideas and materials to use if you print them out. I’d suggest you only use these graphics for personal purposes though, since some may have copyrights on them. Till they are used within your crafts which are personal, that will not be a problem.

Your local library can be a good, low cost way to print these out if you don’t have a printer of your own at home. You can purchase stickers and various designs from supply stores but there are much cheaper ways.

• Most people do not know that you can make your own glue instead of buying it from the store. While working on your project, decide how much glue is necessary and mix flour and water in equal measures. Once you’ve reached the consistency of a paste, you can quit mixing it up.

You should use the glue immediately after you finish making it because if you leave it out, it will become moldy. It’s good for paper projects and should be left out to dry completely after it’s used.

For a nice touch, add glitter to your glue and use it as paint for decorating items in your scrapbook.

• Many cool crafts call for some type of modeling clay; don’t be afraid to make your own at home! Rather than spending a lot of money for store supplies, you probably already have the ingredients in your kitchen that you can make stuff with. Use 1 cup flour, a tablespoon oil, 2 tablespoons cream of tarter, 1/2 cup salt, and 1 cup water. Saute the combined ingredients in a large pan for a few minutes. Once the mixture is at room temperature, place it in an airtight container, and store in the refrigerator until you are ready to use it. The clay will dry up. So make sure the container is air tight.

E: Be observant with your surroundings and you will find a vast assortment of materials. With scissors and markers, a pizza box can be cut up to make a big wall collage, dry pasta can be painted and glued on as a decoration paper plates can be masks.

When you’re crafting, look around the house using not only your eyes, but your imagination. The options are endless!

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