Author: Shelly Hill

When it comes to Halloween costumes, we always decided to make our own because we felt it was foolish to spend $35 and up, for a costume that our child was only going to wear one time. Over the years, my sister-in-law and I have made numerous costumes for our children and I thought I would share a few simple ideas with you.

If you are concerned about safety, I recommend purchasing some reflective material patches at your local fabric and crafts store, and sew or glue them onto your child’s costume. This safety measure will help car drivers to see them at night as they are crossing the street. I always recommend that a responsible adult accompany children on Trick or Treat night.

Here are the Halloween costume ideas we came up with over the years.

Lady Bug – You will need: red leotard, red tights, 4 sheets of black felt and fabric glue. Cut out some circles and ovals from the felt and glue onto the red leotard so that it looks like lady bug spots. To make antennae, purchase a black headband, 2 round 3″ diameter Styrofoam balls, 2 pencils, black acrylic paint and gorilla glue. Paint the Styrofoam balls and pencils black and let dry. Glue pencils to the center of the Styrofoam balls, let dry and then glue the pencils to the top of the head band.

Note: You could use the same concept above and do a bumble bee and substitute the red clothing items with yellow clothing items and make black felt bee-style stripes.

Construction Worker – You will need: denim blue jeans, white T-shirt, flannel shirt and a yellow plastic hard hat found at a discount toy store. You can borrow a man’s tool belt or purchase a canvas-style apron with pockets at a local craft store for a few dollars. If desired, visit your local dollar discount store and purchase a plastic tool set to stick into the pockets of the tool belt.

Golfer – You will need: khaki colored pants, polo-style shirt and a plaid golfers cap. You can purchase plastic golf clubs and balls at your local dollar discount store. We made our own golf bag by emptying out a large round cardboard tube and painting it with acrylic paints. Punch a hole in each side of the tube and attach twine for a carrying strap. You can fit 3-4 plastic golf clubs into the holder and have your child carry it over their shoulder.

Nurse – You will need: white skirt, shirt, tights and shoes which your child most likely already has in her closet. To add to that, purchase a child’s size nurses cap at a costume store along with a plastic doctor’s kit at your local dollar discount store. We also accented the white shirt with a name badge and a red felt first-aid cross that we hand drew and safety pinned to the shirt.

Mummy – You will need: white clothing, white ski mask, white sneakers, several rolls of white first aid bandages and numerous safety pins. We cut the bandages into 12-24″ lengths and safety pinned them around the legs, arms and abdomen of the outfit. We chose to use fabric glue to attach them to the white ski mask. If you are making this costume for a small child, then I recommend using non-toxic fabric glue instead of the safety pins.

Black Spider – You will need: black jeans, black sweatshirt, 2 pairs of black little girls tights, 1 bag of fiberfill stuffing, black thread. You need to cut the panty portion off of the tights and just use the legs. Stuff each leg firmly with fiberfill and then sew the end shut with thread. Do this for a total of 4 spider legs. You will want to hand sew (or machine sew) the stuffed legs onto the sides of the black sweatshirt about 4-5″ below the sweatshirt arm. If desired, you can paint the child’s face black or lime green with face paints.

Crayon – You will need: your choice of colored clothing, we selected orange to fit with the Halloween theme, along with several sheets of black felt, fabric glue and a black fabric paint. Grab one of your child’s crayons and use it as an example on how you should cut out designs from your black felt. Attach those designs onto the clothing items so that it resembles a crayon. You can use the black fabric paint to paint on the crayon-makers name on the front of the shirt. To further fit with our theme, we machine sewn a triangular hat out of matching orange felt, so that ‘our’ little crayon had a pointy crayon top.

About the Author:

Shelly Hill is a mother and grandmother living in South Central Pennsylvania. Shelly enjoys crafting and spending time with her family and loves the Fall holiday season. You can visit Shelly online at http://www.workathomebusinessoptions.com or at her recipe blog at http://wahmshelly.blogspot.com for free family-friendly recipes.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – 7 Homemade Kids Halloween Costume Ideas

Author: Bob Beacham

If you’re serious about selling your crafts on the internet you probably have to go into areas that you’re maybe not to familiar with just yet. Things with unfathomable three letter acronyms like SEO. Well let’s de-mistify (and simplify) SEO right now!

SEO just stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is a flashy way of saying something quite obvious – that you want your blog or website to be as attractive to the search engines as possible. Makes sense, yes? The more attractive your craft blog, the more people visit. More people is inevitably more potential customers. Now you can advertise to get them, of course, but that costs money. If we can get a bit of SEO in there, that’s free.

Unless I miss my guess, when you’re building your craft business your budget is probably pretty tight. Free sounds really good!

One SEO area is what we call “link love” and it will definitely help your blog or website popularity. Stands to reason that will will help selling your crafts.

Link love is not to be confused with having a links page where you put all your favorite craft blogs and websites, because frankly that’s a bit of a waste of time. You see when Google looks at your blog it wants to see who is pointing at you, not who you are pointing at. If sites it considers important, or relevant, are pointing at you, it considers you more important. It puts you higher up the rankings.

Getting that link love working for you perhaps requires a more professional attitude than before. Those links going out are a waste of space… mostly.

If someone gets in touch with you and wants a link, it’s pointless just putting that link up. What you want is a “reciprocal” link – them linking back to you. That way you both benefit and it costs you nothing. Of course if your craft is knitting and they’re a firm of architects it’s all pointless anyway – relevant links is key. What’s the point of an architect linking to you? None.

Of course you can reverse this process and politely ask other sites to exchange links. You can also post comments on other people’s craft blogs – which usually gives you the opportunity to add you web address. Don’t abuse this or people will just delete your posts but it’s that magic word “relevant” again. make a relevant, interesting or informative comment and you have another link back. What’s more, people will see your comment and follow that link so you get real eyes on your site as well as the search engines!

I’ll look into more free SEO tactics in my next article. Individually they may not make a massive difference overnight but they’re easy, fast to do and the cumulative effect will have a huge effect on the business of selling your crafts.

About the Author:

Link love is just one of many free ways to improve your craft sales. There’s more invaluable information at Selling Your Crafts where you can also pick up your free copy of the highly acclaimed fact file “Craft Success Online”.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Selling Your Crafts – Get Some Link Love!

Author: Betsy Meeh

Learning to crochet can be a lot of fun and very rewarding. There is an infinite
number of things you can create from crochet and most of them can be very useful
around the house or as presents. For some people crocheting is just a hobby;
however, there are a lot of benefits to learning how to crochet.

Many hobbies or crafts can get pretty pricey to learn. Crocheting is not
expensive at all. The tools needed to get started are very basic and not costly, making crocheting a very appealing hobby to learn.

Also, to learn how to crochet all you need is to become familiar with a small set of common stitches. Once you have learned to do these basic stitches, starting a simple project can be easy and non-threatening. Remember, you always choose something simple and easy to get started.

As you learn the basic stitches of: chain, single crochet and double crochet practice, practice, practice. Attempt to make your stitches always the same, not too loose, not too tight. If you feel frustrated, set it aside and come back to it after a little while. Don’t give up on the first or second try.

Once you have mastered the basic stitches and have completed some easy projects you can start making all sorts of things such as hats, scarfs, decorative pillows, bedspreads, tablecloths, etc… The more difficult projects should be left for last.

In addition, you can save a lot of money by creating wonderful gifts for your family and friends. Everyone loves to get an original bonnet or pair of mittens. New moms love baby blankets and winter scarfs are the most popular of all.

Completing your own crochet creations will give you a positive sense of achievement and confidence. Allowing yourself to be creative through your crochet projects will bring you lots of joy and admiration from those around you.

Once you learn to crochet, you can pass on your knowledge to those around you. Many families share crochet pieces for generation after generation. Crochet heirlooms can be a sign of pride and family tradition.

Crocheting is very relaxing and enjoyable. Learning to crochet is easy, rewarding and beneficial as well. The best thing about it is that it enables you to create all sorts of projects for the home, family and friends in a very inexpensive way. Crocheting is a wonderful craft that must be passed on from generation to generation.

About the Author:

Betsy Meeh is an experienced crocheter with over 30 years of practice. She has completed many detailed projects such as bedspreads and blankets. She believes that crochet has also provided her with a more stress free lifestyle.

Get more Learning to Crochet Tips by visiting: http://learningtocrochet.weebly.com/.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Learning To Crochet