Introducing a new foster child into your home can be both exciting and challenging. While you help them adjust to their new environment, it’s important to also spend quality bonding time together. Crafting is a great way to connect and make memories. Here are six fun crafts to try with your foster child.

1. Get Creative with Duct Tape

Duct tape crafts are inexpensive and allow for lots of creativity. Make wallets, bracelets, bowls, picture frames – anything you can imagine! Let your foster child pick out colourful tapes to design something unique. Help them make duct tape flowers by cutting strips and assembling them into a flower shape. These bright flowers make lovely gifts for caregivers and caseworkers.

2. Make Homemade Playdough

Mixing up a batch of playdough is the perfect rainy-day activity. Add a few drops of food colouring so your foster child can create playdough in their favourite hues. Set out cookie cutters, rolling pins, and beads so they can shape and decorate their dough creations. When you are finished, store the playdough in an airtight container to keep it fresh for next time. Playdough helps develop fine motor skills.

3. Paint Kindness Rocks

Gather smooth stones and set out acrylic paints. Encourage your foster child to paint inspiring designs on their rocks – anything from animals to affirmations. Once dry, deliver the rocks around your community by hiding them in parks or other locations. Painting rocks spreads cheer and gives your foster child a fun project to be proud of.

4. Make Photo Books

Look through old photos and have your foster child help select their favourites. Print and assemble the photos into a homemade book. Let them decorate the cover and add any special details. Whenever they need a reminder of happy memories, your foster child can read through their custom photo book. A photo book also makes a thoughtful keepsake to take when it’s time for them to leave your home. You may find that your agency for fostering in Glasgow actually encourages you to help them record significant life events.

5. Create Kindness Cards

Spread encouragement and joy by working together to make handmade greeting cards. Fold construction paper in half and decorate the fronts with uplifting messages and images. Sign each card with an inspiring quote or note. Deliver the cards to nursing homes, hospitals, or anywhere they can brighten someone’s day. Making cards is an easy way to talk about spreading kindness.

6. Make Decorative Felt Magnets

Cut fun shapes out of colourful pieces of felt. Let your foster child pick their favourite designs. Glue magnet strips onto the back of each felt shape. These handmade magnets can decorate fridges and other metal surfaces. It’s a simple craft that fosters creativity.

Doing arts and crafts together provides meaningful time for you and your foster child to connect. Allowing them to express their creativity also builds self-esteem. Keep these activities light-hearted by focusing more on the experience than the end result. Most importantly, have fun crafting memories as a foster family!

Selling handmade crafts online is an excellent way to make money from your passion. However, it isn’t as easy as just sending something to someone who pays for it. First, of course, there must be a market. But there are also many legal issues and methods of exposure for success.

Find Something You Love to Do

Something can seem like a good idea at the time, but you can quickly grow bored. And if you are creating things purely for money, the quality won’t be there, and customers will know. One of the best methods is to create products you know you can happily spend all day with. For instance, if you love fun and easy macrame projects for beginners, start there. Or perhaps you have a passion for candle making. Whatever it is, try to ensure it’s something you love to do.

Finding a Niche Helps when Selling Handmade Crafts Online

If you want to start a business selling crafts, you probably already enjoy a hobby. This could be anything, like electronics, knitting, or making candles. On the web, people like to buy high-quality handcrafted goods. But there is a lot of competition in the market. So you need to think about how to make your items stand out. This means coming up with something unique to sell that people want. This is called a “niche” on the Internet, and it’s what you should focus on.

Learn the Basics of eCommerce

eCommerce is the trading of goods and services over the Internet. There are four main types you can base your business around. These are known as the following common areas:

• B2B: Business-to-Business.
• B2C: Business-to-Consumer.
• C2C: Consumer-to-Consumer.
• C2B: Consumer-to-Business.

As a craftsperson, you will most likely deal with the B2C system. Online site builders like Wix and platforms like Etsy make it easier than ever to do B2C eCommerce as a craftsperson. This is because they handle the technical side of things with your storefront, with integration options.

Build Your Crafts Around Your Brand

People who are new to business often forget how important it is to have a strong brand identity. It’s greater than simply having a company name and an emblem. It’s knowing who you are, what your story is, and what you believe in. A small business needs to have core values. And your brand should reflect this, from the name of your shop to the way you talk about your products on social media and in descriptions. You expand these in your tagline and the “About” page.

Learn the Laws Around Your Craft

As a crafter, it’s your job to make sure your products are safe and useful. But as a business owner, you also have to do things like make sure your business is following the rules. So, here are some things you should keep in mind if you want to stay out of trouble with local laws:

• Spend some time setting up your tax payments as a sole trader.
• Learn about the fire safety regulations in your country.
• Specify if your products have a choking hazard for young children.
• List all raw materials used in the making of your products.
• Check toy safety laws where you make and sell your products.
• Research copyrights, patents, and trademarks before starting your company.
• Provide details of independent testing such as hallmarking.

There are, of course, many different ways to stay safe in business. And some rules depend on the country. If you sell things abroad, you also need to know about international laws. If you learn as much as you can before selling products, you can avoid getting in trouble.

Be Fair with Your Prices

Setting the right price for handmade crafts can be hard, and it depends on a lot of different things. Some of these are economic factors, trends, and the cost of materials. But there are some ways you can price your products in a fair way. First, you should figure out how much one of your products costs you to make and compare that to how much similar products sell for in retail stores. Then you can set the price for making a profit, but be mindful of what expectations.

Spend Time on Your Product Pages

Product pages are very important. Not just for people who visit your blog or seller platform but also for people who find you through search engines. When people find your site through search engines instead of paid ads, this is called “organic traffic.” You should also use “keywords” along with descriptions that are easy to read, honest, and clear. Keywords are words and phrases that are unique to your products and help search engines find your page based on search queries.

Find a Platform for Selling Handmade Crafts Online

As you may already know, there are a lot of websites where you can sell your crafts. Most people know about Etsy. There are also sites like Folksy, iCraft, and Handmade Amazon. These are your best choices because they are full of people who already want to buy handmade items. But you can also set up your own storefront for online shopping. It is more difficult and will take more time. But if you use a site builder like Shopify or Wix, you are in charge of everything.

Setup a Social Media Business Page

Word-of-mouth is a tried-and-true way to get people to notice you. And social media are a big part of modern life. If you are just starting out as a seller, social media is a great tool to use. This is because you can make a Facebook page for your business for free. But social media has a lot more to offer than just this. For example, you can talk to customers directly, get access to larger networks, and use free analytics tools to get specific demographic data about customers.

Summary

Selling handmade crafts online isn’t too challenging. But you can lose money and passion if you start off the wrong way. First, find something you love to create. Then learn about eCommerce and regulations. Finally, use platforms like Etsy and social media to promote your business.

Ecommerce platforms have made it easy for us to shop for almost anything. Right from apparel to electronics, grocery to furniture, pet supplies to medicine — everything is just a few clicks away. Now you can even shop for fabrics online. 

Whether it’s the current pandemic that has forced you to stay home or you don’t have enough time to visit a fabric store yourself, online fabric stores solve your problems. These stores offer you an array of fabric options. 

But buying fabric from an online store is easier said than done. Finding a reputed online fabric store, understanding the scales, and not feeling the fabric against your skin may create some problems. But, owing to the current situation, it is much better than physically visiting the store. 

If you want to buy fabric online, these tips might help you. 

• Research the store before you buy 

The first step to buying good fabric online is ensuring that the online store is genuine and reputable, and more so, if you want to place a bulk order. 

To know the reputation of the online store, check the reviews of other shoppers. See what’s their opinion about the website. Did they receive satisfactory services? Was the fabric quality fine? 

You can also get leads through online sewing forums. Once you find a good website, ensure to check out its policies. 

• Buy fabric as per your sewing project 

Online fabric stores provide you with a wide selection of fabrics. Finding so many options may overwhelm you. Hence, be clear about what kind of fabric you want for your sewing project. 

If you are a beginner, opt for an affordable cotton fabric, easy to sew, and available in almost every color and pattern. You may find different options like quilting cotton (a stiff variant ideal for quilts) and apparel cotton (cotton lawn, Chambray, cotton velvet, etc.).

Linen is a great sustainable option for clothing, curtains, bedding, and tablecloths. For formal wear, go for silk or velvet. For supple garments, opt for a knit fabric, like a jersey. 

Other options that you will find on an online fabric store include polyester (clothing), rayon (clothing), satin (clothing, bedsheets, and furnishing), denim and canvas (outdoor furnishing, totes, etc.), felt (home décor, craft projects, and hats), fleece (blankets and stuffed toys), and flannel (blankets). 

Determine your requirements before buying fabric online. 

• Buy a width conversion chart 

Your entire sewing project will be doomed if you land up with a fabric with the wrong width. Hence, buying fabric with the correct width is imperative. 

But, how do you know the width of the fabric? Here, a width conversion chart comes to your rescue. 

Every fabric comes with a different width. A width conversion chart will help you determine the width required for your sewing pattern, helping you buy the suitable fabric. 

• Don’t miss the product description 

Most buyers happily hit the buy button upon checking the pictures of the product. They don’t take the pain of going through the product description and often end up with a substandard or altogether different product. 

Reading the product description is necessary to know the weight, length, width, and stretch of the fabric. The specification list entails a lot of information, like stretch level, dimensions, weight, spandex percentage, color, etc. Plus, it also includes shrinkage warnings and washing instructions. 

Go through the written information before you buy fabric online. 

The bottom line 

Whether you are starting your sewing business or want to sew a perfect dress for your best friend’s wedding, buying fabric can be a hard nut to crack. We hope these tips help you in finding the best fabric for your sewing project. 

We all know that teenagers can be complicated sometimes, especially teen boys. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t interact with them or that we shouldn’t show them new and cool things to do. They also tend to get bored of certain activities and spend most of their time in front of the computer.

If you want to avoid seeing your teen at the PC all day, you might want to try a DIY craft with him. Working together on a cool and fun project will create a stronger bond between the two of you and will also enable his creative side to kick in. We’ve listed below a few DIY crafts that you can easily try with your boy. For more interesting suggestions on this topic, check out https://diyexperience.com/!

1. Splash Bomb Catapult

All teen boys need a catapult, especially in the summer to fight with water balloons. They can also use it in the winter to throw snowballs. While you might think that a catapult is very hard to make, especially for a boy, you are wrong. This is an easy and cool project for a teen boy.

For this craft, you are going to need 12 dowel rods, rubber bands, low temp glue gun, and a lid from a bottle of juice. Instead of the dowel rods, you can also use pencils but the pre-cut rods are better and stronger.

First step is to make a T shape using 2 dowel rods and rubber band. Then you need to make a square base for the catapult using one of the 2 dowel rods you previously tied. The T shape is

part of the shooting arm. Add a vertical dowel rod for every corner of the base and add another horizontal rod for the top of the shooting arm.

Connect all of the vertical rods just like you make a tent by using horizontal rods. Also, tie another rod to the shooting arm you make in the first step to make it longer. Glue the lid as an ammunition basket and the catapult is done.

2. Baseball String Bracelet

While some might think that bracelets are just for girls, this baseball string bracelet is great for boys. Plus, you only need 2 things for this craft: a baseball and a Xacto knife. For the part of the cutting, you might want to help your teenager to avoid any problems.

All you have to do is to cut near the stitches and ripe the leather material off the ball. Don’t cut on the stitches because you are going to use them later. After you got the material out, you need to keep only the part with the stitches. Cut the remaining part in 2 so that you can make 2 bracelets out of one ball. Usually half of the material is enough for the risk of a teen. Make sure to measure his wrist to see if it will fit.

The next step can be made by him without your supervision. All he has to do is to pull on both ends of the strings and tie them together. At the end, he will get a super bool bracelet made out of a baseball ball.

3. Duck Call

Also known as the neighbor annoyer, the duck call is an interesting craft that your teen can do in just a minute. This is by far the easiest DIY craft for teens. Another important thing is that he will only need a regular straw and a scissor. You might hate this DIY craft because it can be very noisy, but your son will definitely love it.

All he has to do is to flatten the straw at one end. He can also rub the straw on the edge of the table. After the straw is flat at one end, he needs to cut a point in the end of the straw. Cut both of the edges and at the end, he will have a sharp end and a regular end of the straw. Use the sharp end to blow. He will need to blow pretty hard to make it sound.

Hope we enjoyed the crafts we prepared for this article. Show them to your teen and ask him if he wants to try them out with you one day. This way, you will make sure that he loses interest in computer games and that he uses these crafts outside, in the yard to enjoy a bit of sun. If you

both enjoy doing these crafts, you might want to check out the internet for more projects you can do together.