by Trudy Brown

Created on: October 17, 2009   Last Updated: May 24, 2011

Crafting can get expensive in a hurry if you go to the hobby store and buy up all the various colorful supplies. All that paper and craft foam and paint adds up fast. So, how can you make arts and crafts an affordable way to bring your family together and give them something creative to do?

To start with, save your junk. Instead of throwing away empty paper towel rolls, old magazines, empty egg cartons, milk jugs, broken bits of jewelry, and worn out clothing scraps; save them in a special drawer or box in your house to be pulled out when you're ready to have some cheap, but memorable family fun. With recycled supplies and a couple of inexpensive extras, you can help your family spend quality time getting to know each other.

1. Personalized place mats

Imagine the conversations that can be started as your family members work together to each make a personalized place mat for the table. Have each person cut out pictures from magazines of things that interest them. If they have favorite clothes that are worn and ready to be thrown out, let them cut a scrap from those. Press some favorite flowers. Pass out a couple of pictures of each family member and let them use those as well. Arrange all of these objects in a collage and glue them together. Use contact paper to laminate your place mats and make them durable. Now your family has a masterpiece that really represents them individually. You may even find out something about your kids you didn't know based on the objects they've chosen to describe themselves. You could also do seasonable place mats using holiday stencils or cookie cutters to draw pictures, scraps of wrapping paper, old greeting cards, etc.

2. Odds and Ends animals

For little ones, help them make caterpillars out of empty egg cartons or elephant noses out of paper towel rolls. The possibilities are endless for a preschooler's imagination. Some uncooked rice or beans poured into a paper towel roll that is then taped shut on the ends makes a great noisemaker for your budding musician. No matter your budget, there is always crafty fun to be had if you combine a little creativity with a few recyclables.

3. Seasons Greetings

During the holidays, save money by having your family work together to make homemade greeting cards. Let each person choose a few people from your card list and make personalized cards for those people. Imagine how much more meaningful a homemade card would be to your friends that a store-bought card that took very little thought to choose. Decorate your homemade card with seasonal stickers, stamps, ribbon, or bits of wrapping paper. The sincerity and thoughtfulness is what matters.

4. Marbleized crayons

If your family likes to color but has a box full of broken crayons, you can make a whole new color spectrum by recycling them into colorful marbleized crayons. Use a muffin pan and put a few crayons in each muffin cup and stick in the oven for a few minutes until they are melted. Pull them out and let them cool into beautiful circles that can be used to color amazing pictures. Try to put complimentary colors together. Put red, green and white together to make a crayon perfect for decorating homemade wrapping paper and gift tags.

It isn't hard to be frugal when crafting if you think before you throw away. Keep anything you think might be useful in the future for crafting and you are guaranteeing your family some quality fun time together.

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