We here at Crucial Vacuum are proud to join CraftGossip in hosting a Holiday giveaway to find the best personal DIY or upcycling story where the winner will get a $100 Amazon Gift Card!
Our company and our wonderful customers share that DIY spirit where we’d rather fix something ourselves than replace an item or take it to a repair shop. We’ve heard countless stories from customers over the years that have repaired their own appliances and vacuums saving themselves money and getting a sense of accomplishment from rolling up their sleeves. That kind of attitude and work ethic is what we’re all about and what we’re here to celebrate!
What inspires you to create? Do you get a thrill in getting your hands dirty and letting your imaginations go wild? Whether you’ve recently built a piece of furniture, fixed a home appliance yourself as opposed to buying a new one, created some festive decorations for the upcoming holidays we want to hear about it! The possibilities for your stories and projects are endless!
Over the next few weeks tell us your best and most accomplished DIY/upcycling story to win.
What inspired you to tackle a project, or fix something on your own. Was there any problems or obstacles along the way? What tools or items did you need to complete this wonderful piece of work? The more detailed the better! Get passionate and have fun with it because after all that’s what these kinds of projects are all about.
Good luck everyone and we look forward to your stories!
Ends 31st Dec 2014. Open Worldwide.
I am altogether in my element when upcycling: grew up doing it, w/ a very creative, crafty mom, & still am creatively fed when taking a cast-off & making something fab from it! Couple examples: made a gorgeous fruit-topped topiary for a wedding shower centerpiece from a (clean, not used) plunger; made a cute nightshirt for my daugher from my hub’s dress shirt that had a ripped sleeve. I make jean pillows & aprons from old jeans, personalizing them w/ embroidery & trim. Thanks much for the giveaway! Merry Christmas to all! 🙂
Which story do I start with? I guess the one that always comes to mind first is: The safety switch on my washing machine had broken. I found a video on YouTube where this guy showed how to take apart the washing machine in order to replace the switch. There I was in the basement… just me, my washer, the switch, and my laptop. Replaying the video over and over and over. My washing machine torn apart down to the skeleton. Guess what? I did it! I replaced the switch, got my washer back together, and it worked! I was so proud of myself. Over the years, I’ve upscaled many projects including filing cabinets, frames, and tables. For me, it’s not “what” inspires me to DIY and craft, but WHO. My Dad always fixed things himself and I guess growing up that way, it’s just natural for me to DIY when I can and I’m not afraid to tackle projects! As for crafting, it was my grandma (my Dad’s mom) who always crafted so I guess that’s where I got the crafting gene.
I am a fixer-upper from the beginning of my life. My parents were mechanically inclined by nature and I was fortunate enough to get those fixer genes. I have changed the oil in my car, along with changing batteries, sparkplugs, wires and a few other things like tires. I also build computers beginning from Windows 3.1. I have also tackled other projects over the years. I recently bought a heavy duty desk from the Salvation Thrift store and the drawers did not did in there right. The railings were crooked and the drawers were a bit to small for the desk. But I got it fixed and it works great. I have had to DIY because of lack of funding’s to have someone else do them, but there is also a since of pride that goes along with doing it yourself.
I love getting discarded upholstery and tapestry samples and turning them into useful items: most commonly are purses and now, for the holidays, wine totes that won’t break like paper gift bags do, sending that wine bottle onto the ground.
Favorite recycled craft? Potholders made from old 100% cotton sweaters! Everyone had a favorite sweater that eventually gets a stain or snag right on the front where everyone can see, but the sleeves and back are all still pristine. I cut them apart, iron on stabilizer, line with insulated batting and back with leftover quilt blocks or fabric. They are decorative as well as super functional: the sweater gives your hand a better grip on hot dishes – and it’s the perfect use for an “ugly” Christmas sweater that you would never wear but for one reason or another still have in your dresser drawer.
I needed a place for my new sewing machine. I luckily found a used kitchen counter at a yard sale and cut the opening and mounted a shelf under it so I could have a nice level fit for the machine! I have the bonus of a lot of sewing room to the left of it, or room for another machine or serger.
I really enjoy getting things at yard sales and re-purposing them!
Oh my Gosh! I love your site and I visit all the time! You all have some great ideas that I pin (make) and my friends re-pin and make.
I like to believe that making any type of crafts with recyclable items is not only smart but will save our planet. Last September my sister Carleen was diagnose with cancer and I had a idea what to make her for Christmas. She loved the Eiffel Tower and I had seen a sculpture which to me looked like it was made with bottle cap tabs. At the time it seem like everyone was making all type of recyclable item crafts with bottle cap tabs .. I started to collect them and I needed alot of them. I wanted it to make it this tower. I did collect them from everywhere and I did create a Eiffel Tower for her and she loved it. I even used a recycled box to place the Tower in for future storage. When I decide to make any project the first item I usually like to use is in a form of a recyclable item .I am happy to say that my sister Carleen loved her gift and she did lose her battle to cancer on Dec 5, 2014 The Eiffel Tower is still in her home were everyone can enjoy it,,,Sincerely Michelle Wray
I just did a art show featuring my upcycled Christmas art at a new store in my town called “pinch poke”. its a wonderful store all things upcycled, furniture vintage everything. i worked very hard for this show, I made upcycled vintage cards decopaged onto bags and gift tags, vinyettes made of upcycled vintage Christmas cards, dolls upcycled into angels, santas from gourds carved santas , the list goes on and on. We had the best show of reinvented,repurposed,reclaimed, upcycled, recycled, restyled Christmas. Now that was a mouthful!!
So far, I’ve managed to fix just a few small things…I’m a bit on the timid side when it comes to do it yourself because I’m afraid I’ll make it worse instead of better. You know – a washer here, a nail there…small things like that. However, I did fix our dishwasher once. We really needed it to hang on a few more months. Dishes were not coming out clean. I ordered a replacement part for it, took it apart, cleaned it well, put in the replacement part and voila! It lasted a good while longer than originally thought.
My up cycling prides are a toss up between the gorgeous rainbow rug I made from tshirt yarn (from thrifted tees) or, perhaps my favorite type of project is up cycling thrifted men’s sweaters. I like to buy xl men’s sweaters and shape the into tunics for me. Sometimes I’ll also cut the sleeves off to make sweater leggings for my girls.
I’ve fixed many sorts of things! Lol. The car, mechanically a few times. The car with my craft tool. The towel rail in our home we rent has been hot glued back into its hole of nothingness! I’ve up cycled fruit boxes into storage shelves. We live in Australia and I’ve decided we will have our hot Christmas roast lunch outside in the entertainment area, so I’ve made a long, lush garland to hang above the table, all decorated, made from a broken tree. I “rescued” a broken part of a privacy fence and cut it up to make a delightful large wreath with a beach theme to hang in the outdoor area. I “rescued” an old wooden framed, plain glass window which is in the process of being Scrapbooked for my son for Christmas. Lol. In fact I have a reputation for rescuing homeless or unwanted items and repurposing them or up cycling them to give them a new lease on life.
I love to upcycle just for the joy of using something I already have and making it into something new. Sometimes I have to do it when the holiday I celebrate is just not represented in the stores around me. it is all about Christmas in retail here so I have to make my own Chanukah decorations. So I made a great bag to carry this holiday season from a leftover book bag left behind by my Midshipman daughter when she went to USNA. I drew a picure of my grand-kitty living with my older daughter in Philidelphia. So I may not have any of my children at home this holiday season I can still keep them close.
I don’t have tools to make things but I like to recycle. I like to make beaded necklaces out of pet vaccine bottles. I get clothing from the Good Will stores to make all kind of crafts.
I bought a mid-century modern buffet at a yard sale for $5, sanded it down with my orbital sander, stained it the color it was originally stained (natural oak), and now use it as a TV stand and electronics cabinet for the DVR, DVD, etc. and it looks GREAT! I started it in June, but it got very hot very fast, and I ended up with heat rashes from all the sweating I did on the back deck while sanding it down. In the future, for the two dressers I’ll be refinishing, it will be a little earlier in the year! But the things that have been the most challenging, and perhaps the most personally satisfying, have been the plumbing repairs I’ve done over the past five years. My husband had a stroke in 2006, which left him paralyzed on his entire right side. So when things went wrong, plumbing-wise since then, it was either a plumber or me. I knew I wouldn’t damage things any further than they already were, so with some advisement from both my husband and the folks at the hardware store, I replaced the cold water inlet into the hot water heater after it just suddenly burst one day, which involved unsoldering and resoldering the main water line in to the hot water heater. I replaced the turnoff at the same time, with a ball valve, so it’s also now easier to turn off the water, in the event of a need for future repairs or replacement of the hot water heater. The other plumbing jobs involved replacing the broken pressure relief valve in our well water pump system, and replacing all of the pipes under the kitchen sink. There was a clog , and whoever had installed the pipes in the first place hadn’t installed a removable trap, so everything was permanently attached. I decided I wanted every part of it to be removable, so I figured out where to cut the existing pipe to be able to take the entire thing to the hardware store. I handed it to the fellow in the store and asked him to help me find the parts that would give me a removable trap, as well as compression connections on the remainder of it. I only had to glue one part! The rest all screws tight. After that, the disposal blew a hole in its side (it was 30 years old, so not exactly unexpected), and that had to be replaced, also. The next project is going to be refinishing the two dressers and the kitchen cabinets. The house was built in the 1970’s, so the kitchen cabinets are very dark resulting in a gloomy kitchen, and I want something light and airy, not dark and gloomy! The dressers are for a back bedroom I’m converting to a craft room!
Wow, some of those stories are humbling. My huband is the fixer, if he doesn’t know how to do it, he finds a tutorial on line. He can’t stand the thought of paying someone to do something he can do himself. I am the thrift store/garage saler repurpose an item to death sorta person. Found a kiln at a garage sale for 5 dollars, husband melted down wine bottles had beautiful christmas presents that year.
Love shopping at thrift stores and repairing broken items and making them my own. Especially vintage sewing machines. Love the history behind them.
Here’s my favorite upcycle story: A few years ago I was checking out the clearance section at Sur La Table. I found a beautiful strawberry kitchen towel for only 99 cents. The strawberries on the towel were big and bright juicy red. Although I didn’t need a kitchen towel, I bought it for the print and super deal of a price. After a couple of days, I decided to use the towel for a new purse. I sewed it up in an afternoon and took it with me to a classic car show that was held in Knott’s Berry Farm’s parking lot. The purse was perfect because the strawberries represented Knott’s Berry Farm and some of the red hot rods I saw that day. 🙂
Well, I could share lots and lots of craft gifts I’ve given and felt the joy as the recipient opened the gift and felt the love I put into the gift and there are plenty that I could share that I’ve started and never finished…you’ve never done that, right??? 🙂 But this summer, trying to save some money, I tackled fixing the window in my car, all by my self. The mechanic gave us an estimate upwards of $550. Well, we really couldn’t afford that right now on my old 2000 Honda CR-V (She’s been nicknamed the Rollerskate by an old friend). So, after researching online, low and behold, AMAZON had the part I needed to fix the window! Did I mention, it was for the low price of $69 bucks! So…I watched a video and did it my self. I’ve never felt such an accomplishment before. It was a lot of tinkering taking apart a car door to get to the motor (well, the whole regulator) and replace it, but I did it. It wasn’t really hard, it just took time. I was SO proud when I finished. I showed my children (and my husband ;)) that sometimes we can do it ourselves. I think all my crafting (aka. tinkering with my hands) experience has helped me have the confidence to do things like this.
As a kid I always loved watching my grandmother make quilts on her large quilting frame that hung from the ceiling. She made the most beautiful patterns and there were always scraps for me to play with. She was my inspiration. I don’t quilt, but when my mother handed over a quilt that was so well worn that it was no longer really a quilt, I stared at that piece long and hard. What to do with it? It couldn’t be tossed, it was too dear to me. One morning I woke up with an idea. I curled up on the couch with that quilt and took it apart bit by bit. Not every single piece, but took it down into manageable sizes. Then I gathered my sewing machine, and some of my own fabric and made a cloth table runner. I have it stored away in a box labeled farm as we have most of our house packed away so we can sell it, but as soon as I can, I hope to stretch it out across a picnic table and have a wonderful spring lunch at our new home.
Last month my husband and I decided we wanted to update our kitchen counters. After realizing that the cost to cover 100 square feet of counter tops with the cheapest type of counters we could get would be around the $5000 mark we promptly turned to the DIY method. After some research we ended up building our own faux butcher block counter tops from pine planks. We then stained them and sealed them with several coats of polyurethane and installed them. They turned out beautifully and we only spent $260 in materials and 10 days of hard work.
( I don’t know if links are allowed in comments, but you can see the before and after photos here: http://christy.mesker.us/2014/11/19/cost-and-materials-for-diy-butcherblock-kitchen-countertops/ )
I have always had super sensitive skin and I was sick of not being able to use a lot of the commercial skin care products that I was so attracted to. So, I’ve since found ways to make them myself. I make cold process soap, sugar scrubs, lotion bars, bath bombs and I’ll attempt just about anything else! I didn’t realize how much of a creative outlet making bath and body products could really be until I really got into it. There’s a whole community of makers out there who are a source of wisdom and support. It’s also nice having this hobby that’s also useful. I have always been a crafty person, anything from fiber crafts to woodworking, but I think I’ve found me niche with the bath and body items.
After numerous years of my husband playing softball we found we had a lot of team shirts he couldn’t part with. After a year of preparation through classes, talking to skilled sewers, youtube and pinterest I tackled it and made a quilt of them for a christmas gift. I surprised myself and am very proud of my accomplishment. Before the preparations i truly could only sew a straight line. It has been fulfilling to create this blanket.
My best recycling tips usually involve my crochet. I use empty toilet paper tubes to wind yarn, and I’m getting really good at “frogging” (ripping stitches out) of old worn sweaters and recycling the yarn into new projects. I also take all of my gauge swatches and make them into little decorations, or amigurumis for my grandbabies. I like to get as much life out of things as I can.
My best recycle/DIY was to fix up an old wooden sewing box. It wasn’t the best construction but I still had fun improving it. The insides of the boxes were stained pink and they were rough and needed some sanding and paint before I wanted to use them for anything. The biggest challenge was finding itty bitty hinges that would still be strong enough to support the lid. My husband made new tops as they were split – and that was beyond my expertise. With a coat of pale yellow paint, sanding and a little TLC, it looked much improved. I blogged about the process here: http://www.asimplehomestead.com/sewing-box-remodel/
sound awesome to get a gift card. I would really use it to buy all my craft stuff