Make It!

by Jane Bull

Create beautiful artwork from your own collection of things around the house! From picture frame collages to totally unique shadow boxes, this book has everything a creative child needs to find fun in every corner of his own home, by reusing everyday items and turning them into personalized artwork and jewelry.

Genres: Art, Childrens, Nonfiction, Green

64 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2008

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

A neat book about craftcycling, upcycling - call it what you want, and I don't mind it's a trendy topic. :)
The book is written for kids as the main target audience, but there are a lot of ideas for adults too. Browse, get some ideas, and the next time you were rushing to buy something new, instead make something of the junk materials you already had home. Like an empty milk box or carton, old cans, the mountains of junk mail...

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book, and one of the first I found with "up cycling" projects. Awesome for all kinds of crafters, including kids, and a great resource for teachers, library staff who do programs for any age, camp counselors, and so on.

[Kayleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is 64 pages, so not a lot of meat to start with. Much of it was lecturing about recycling. I counted about 12 projects that had instructions. There are a lot of other ideas shown, like pasting torn paper onto paper, or threading stuff on string. There were about 3 projects I thought were worthwhile, from paper mache bowls and beads to sewing animals from discarded gloves.
Lots of reviews I read say this is the best book they've seen. Maybe I've just been around too long and have read too many of these.

[GateGypsy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some fun art projects to do using the kind of recyclable items most households are apt to have from time to time. Some of them are less useful, but others are kindof exciting. My 6 year old picked several projects he wanted to do, and we collected the recyclable items at home until we could do the art projects. His almost-3-year-old sister participated. I would recommend this for parent-particpation and their children aged 3-9. My son particularly liked the collage portraits, the paper mâché bowls, the rag rug, and the odd-mitt stuffies.

[Tamara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably the best kid recycling craft book I've seen so far. Some really cute ideas, extremely easy directions and all of the "ingredients" are everyday throwaways.

A lot of recycling craft books rely on "finds", but these would be found in every home's trash can or recycling bin.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked how this book talked about the source of different materials, when they were discovered and how/why to recycle them. The book gives several suggestions for crafts reusing different materials.

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another in the current trend of green crafts and recylcling. This one, however, stands out. There are some standard paper projects, but also new things like reusing small plastic toys, bottle lids, socks, etc. Lost of full color pictures make this easy for children to use.

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is about using readily available recycled materials to make simple crafts. We haven't tried any of the projects yet. My 8 year old wants to make the papier-mache bowls using junk mail. The bubble-wrap pillow also looks doable.

[Amy Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a pretty good little book that teaches kids about recycling and has some interesting, easy, and fun crafts to do with recyclable materials. It's a DK book, so it's very busy. This would be a great rainy day project book.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very nice but my favorite craft books for young ones are by Kathy Ross.

[Hilary]

Recommended at the BYU Symposium.

[Hurriyyah Falak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book for beginners full of inspirations for all ages.