5 Fun Art Projects You Can Do With Everyday Items

5 Fun Art Projects You Can Do With Everyday Items

Art and craft projects require lots of special supplies and equipment, right? Wrong! There are so many wonderful creative projects you can get started with right away with items you already have in your house. Read on for some inspiration.

5 Fun Art Projects You Can Do With Everyday Items

Buttons

You can create some truly stunning art work with buttons. For instance, a beautiful canvas picture would make a lovely addition to a nursery. To create your own, you will need a small canvas, buttons, a glue gun, paint and a paint brush. Choose the image you would like to make and trace it onto the canvas. Paint in the outline and then start to stick on the buttons. You could choose paint and buttons in either contrasting or matching colors.

Tape

Tape is a versatile and diverse medium, from delicate Japanese washi tape to robust duct tape. It can be stuck to almost any surface, anywhere, and can be used for both 3D and 2D projects. You could use it to create tape art pictures, or a funhigh contrast picture.

Intricate flower pencils also look amazing and are so simple to make. All you need is a pencil and any colour of duct tape you like; consider using two shades, one for the middle of the flower and one for the petals. Simply tear a piece of duct tape off, around four centimetres long. 

Fold one top corner down, leaving a narrow strip on the side and a wider strip along the bottom. Then fold down the other top corner. You should have a little house shape. Wrap it around the pencil at the top end, using the wider part to stick it on. Repeat, building up layers, until the flower has blossomed.

Cardboard Tubes

Who hasn’t created something using the humble toilet roll tube? There are so many things you can make, from filling it with rice and covering the ends to make maracas, to glueing two together to make binoculars. Start stockpiling cardboard tubes to use for your next homemade art project.

Glass Jars

Mason jars or even empty jam jars are another extremely versatile material. How about using fine art as your inspiration? Beautiful Mondrian-inspired craft looks amazing but is easy to make. Simply map out some black lines to make different-sized squares - liquid leading is suggested here but a sharpie would work just as well - then fill in the squares with white, red or yellow glass paint in random patterns.

Post-it notes

Office workers around the world have been using post-it notes to decorate their windows for years. You can turn any picture into similar pixelated art. Why not start easy with a butterfly? On some squared paper, map out your picture, making sure that it will not be bigger than your wall or window. 

You can make it as intricate as you like, or just very simple. Choose which colors to use. High contrast colors can look particularly effective. Using your grid as a guide, start sticking your post-it notes, working methodically from one side of the picture to the other.