Arts and Crafts to make and sell

Wrap candles to make them fancy . Starting with tall, plain pillar candles, it's easy to end up with beautiful and desirable home decorating items that are likely to sell well. Choose unscented white candles for the most versatility, or make scent and color substitutions as you see fit depending on the items you intend to wrap the candles with.

• Take a vanilla or unscented pillar candle and some twine or a thin leather thong. Prop sticks of cinnamon up against the candle and tie them to the candle with the twine or thong. The cinnamon will warm up and smell lovely when the candle is lit.
• Take a rectangular strip of sackcloth and a scrap of patterned linen. Cut the scrap down so that it's about as tall as the strip is wide, and then cut a simple shape out of it with fabric scissors. (Fold it in half and cut out half a shape to get a symmetrical piece.) Use a bit of hot glue or another strong adhesive to glue the colorful shape to the sackcloth, and then tie the ensemble around a pillar candle with some twine.
• Take a squat Mason jar with a wide mouth, such as a Ball wide mouth pint canning jar, and glue the bottom of a plain glass-cup candle inside it. Fill the space between the candle and the Mason jar with flattened glass gems (“dragon tears”) in combinations of one or two colors. The colors will light up beautifully when the candle is lit.

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Make artsy frosted glasses. Buy cheap wine glasses or brandy snifters in good condition from thrift or discount stores. Wrap a few rubber bands around them, stuff the insides with newspaper, and then carefully and evenly apply a coat of frost-finish spray paint to the exterior. Once the paint dries, remove the paper and rubber bands to create a cool etched effect.

• The glasses look neat, but they aren't dishwasher or microwave safe. Be sure to let your customers know.
• Experiment with adding small shapes underneath the rubber bands, such as a leaf or cross. Consider using irregular natural shapes, too: a cup “etched” with a unique river stone's shape is an easy sell, and river stones are free.

Make a recycled fringe scarf. Start with any soft T-shirt. Use fabric scissors to carefully cut the shirt off just below the armpits. Take the tube-like bottom part of the shirt and lay it flat, then use your scissors to cut vertical fringe up from the bottom. Space your cuts an eighth to a quarter of an inch apart, and cut 3 to 4 inches (7.6 to 10.2 cm) up. Once the entire bottom of the shirt has been fringed, carefully twist and pull each fringe to stretch and loosen it. The resultant scarf is worn with the fringe pointed down.

• This craft is easy to complete, but it will take a bit of practice to get good enough to sell it. Buy shirts from garage sales and dollar stores to practice on until you feel comfortable selling them.
• Search secondhand shops for cool old designs and patterns to make one-of-a-kind scarves that'll sell like hotcakes.

Make pretty decorative soaps. Although making high-quality, luxurious soap requires a fair amount of effort, simple decorative soaps can be made in less than half an hour and sold for use in guest rooms and gift baskets. Visit a craft store and purchase a block of glycerin soap, as well as a set of color dyes, a few scents (such as lemon, lavender, or mint), and some soft silicone or plastic molds. Cut a piece of soap from the block and melt it in the microwave, then use a Popsicle stick to stir in a few drops of coloring and scent. Pour the mixture into molds and let them set, then pop them out and trim them.

• Go easy on the scents. A little goes a long way.
• Use a spray bottle filled with rubbing alcohol to lightly spray your molds before you pour, and the bottoms of your soaps after you pour them into the molds. The alcohol will prevent unsightly bubbles from forming on them.
• Use a craft knife to carefully trim any extra lip from the edges of the soaps after you remove them.

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