DIY ideas for the crafty, creative student

On Saturday Sept. 27, Geneseo Late Knight hosted a Do-It-Yourself room decorating event. The activities included whiteboards with a photo taken at the event as the background, cardboard letter “G”s for people to customize and blank canvases of different sizes for people to paint and decorate. “Some people did amazing things for [the projects],” coordinator of Late Knight programs and activities Lauren Thompson said. “I didn’t realize how creative our students are.”

Thompson said that about 160 people attended this GLK event. “People ended up staying a lot longer then they did last year [at a similar event]. We ran out of our letter G’s and canvases in the first hour,” she said.

If you missed this DIY event, don’t worry because GLK is planning on having more, similar events entitled “Pinterest Project” nights. Some past crafts GLK has sponsored for “Pinterest Projects” include duct tape wallets, flower pens and Mason jar snow globes.

If you want to make your own Pinterest crafts right now, here are some suggestions for easy and useful DIY crafts, inspired by these GLK events.

Melted crayon wall art

Supplies: blank canvas, box of crayons (enough to fill one entire edge of the canvas), glue and a hair dryer.

Lay newspaper down underneath your canvas before starting. Glue crayons down on one edge of the canvas––it looks best if one full edge of the canvas is covered in crayons. Make sure that the tips of the crayons are pointing down toward the blank part of the canvas. Once you have glued all the crayons down, simply use the blow dryer to melt the crayons onto the blank canvas. This may take some time but you will get an amazing piece of art worthy that’s gallery-worthy.

Clothespin picture frame

Supplies: cardboard, scissors, glue, clothespins and pictures.

Get a large piece of cardboard and cut it into a circle; feel free to make it any size depending on how many pictures you want it to hold. Then, cut out the center of the circle, leaving a border large enough that a clothespin will fit on it comfortably. After cutting out the center, glue down clothes to fill up the entire edge of the circle. When it’s dry, you have a place to hang all those photos or maybe even that paper you got an “A” on.

Shoebox pencil holder

Supplies: shoebox, toilet paper tubes (or paper towel tubes cut up), glue and decorations.

Take an empty shoebox and decorate the outside as you want. You can use wrapping paper, scrapbook paper, jewels, sparkles––anything that you like. When you finish decorating the box, figure out how many toilet paper tubes will fit in the box and glue down one hole, so another hole is facing up. If you’re feeling lazy, just add more toilet paper tubes into the box so they’re closely packed together and you won’t have to glue them down. Then, you can store pencils, pens, scissors or even makeup in there.

There will be another “Pinterest Project” night on Friday Oct. 3 where more crafts will be available for students. GLK is holding “Fall into Autumn” on Saturday Oct. 4. There will be fall-themed crafts such as decorating ceramic pumpkins and pinecones to make mini wreaths. The event will also have apple cider and cider donuts.