How to Make a Broken Dish Pendant

 

This tutorial was originally posted on Crafting a Green World.

Pro tip: If you pretend that your dinnerware aesthetic is mismatched Fiestaware, then it doesn't matter how many dishes your kids break, because you can always just go buy another random plate and it'll fit right in. And bonus points for style, because broken Fiestaware is awesome for crafting!

Of course, you can use all kinds of broken dishes for crafting, but I am particularly fond of this colorful and cute broken dish pendant that I recently made from my dearly departed yellow Fiestaware plate. It's easier than you think to cut ceramics with a couple of standard tools, and there are loads of ways to finish off the pendant to your taste. This broken dish pendant is a fun upcycling project, and you get to use power tools--what could be better?

Tools & Supplies

To make your own broken dish pendant you will need:

Broken Dish

The local thrift store is my favorite place to buy crafting supplies, and I have no qualms about shattering even the cutest thrifted plate just to make mosaic tesserae or broken dish pendants. I'm equally fond of upcycling my own broken possessions, which is why I have that sad little stack of broken Fiestaware!

Dremel with Diamond Bit Cutting Wheel

 

Obviously, you can substitute whatever variable-speed rotary tool you prefer, but my good old Dremel 3000 has been doing right by me for at least a decade now, so I don't have experience with any other brands.

Grinder or Sandpaper (optional)

You do want to grind or sand away any sharp edges or snags, but you can leave the just plain irregular or uneven bits alone if you're not feeling picky.

Jewelry Findings

There's a lot of scope for imagination here! You'll see me finishing my pendant with soldered edges and a double barrel swivel, but you can use any findings and method you prefer, or even just use a tile bit to drill a hole right through your piece for hanging.

1. Cut the pendant shape from your dish

The secret to this project is just how stinking easy it is to cut ceramics with the correct tools. Here, I'm using an old-school Dremel 3000 and a diamond cutting wheel. That's really all you need!  Notice that I'm doing this cutting in my sink, shamefully getting water droplets all over my Dremel. That's because the most important piece to this puzzle is keeping your work surface wet: it reduces friction and lowers the temperature (caused by friction), so your piece is less likely to crack and your cutting wheel will last longer.

2. Sand or Grind the Edges of Your Pendant (optional)

I definitely could have cut this circle more neatly (if you're worried about making wonky cuts, choose a super simple shape, like a triangle, for your first few pendants. Save the wonky-looking circles for experts like me!), but the soldered edges that I'm planning on will cover a lot of flaws. All I did, then, was switch out my Dremel's cutting wheel for a grinding bit to grind down one jagged bit and round the pendant's edges. Rounding the edges ALWAYS makes a cut piece look more professional!

3. Rig the Pendant for Hanging

You have SO many options for actually turning your broken dish into a pendant!

• Use epoxy glue to adhere a bail directly to the back of the pendant.
• Use a diamond drill bit to drill a hole through the top of the pendant.
• Wrap the pendant in wire, and twist to make a loop for hanging.
• Solder around the pendant, then solder on a jump ring.

For a piece any bigger than this particular pendant, I like the look of drilling a hole directly through the dish, but this little Fiestaware logo pendant is only 1" in diameter! Did any of y'all also learn how to solder during the soldered microscope slide jewelry craze? If so, you'll know that I burnished copper foil tape onto the pendant's edges, brushed them with flux, then soldered them with lead-free silver solder. A larger dollop of solder on top allows you to fix the hanger. 

 There are SO MANY fun things to do with broken dish pendants like these. You can turn them into necklaces or charm bracelets, add them to suncatchers or windchimes, or embellish pull chains or garlands. Supersize your broken dish pendants and use them as Christmas ornaments or gift tags, or decoupage or paint on top of them to make signage or wall art. Let me know what you're going to turn YOUR broken dish pendant into in the comments below!

Johnny Appleseed's Grave is a Lie

 

Back when we weren't traveling anywhere, I got so bored one day that I made myself a map that pinpointed every single place that I thought it would be interesting to go in my home state of Indiana. I (correctly) figured that when we did start to travel again, we'd probably start more locally, and wouldn't it be handy to have all the doughnut shops, waterfalls, history museums, nature preserves, and unusual playgrounds already marked for me so that I could simply look up a location, see what's nearby, and detour to visit that, too?

As a matter of fact, it IS handy!

And that's how we four intrepid explorers, on our way to a family reunion in Ann Arbor, Michigan, found ourselves underdressed for the weather and inanely wandering down a path between a giant parking lot and a German social club:

We don't look like we know where we're going, and yet we still managed to find our way to our destination: the gravesite of Johnny Appleseed:

There's a lot about the folktale of Johnny Appleseed that's a lie. 

He wasn't itinerant, but rather had a lot of property spread out over a large area that he often traveled between.

He didn't give apple seeds away or randomly plant them, but instead planted them in orchards as nursery stock, and then sold the young trees to settlers.

He did proselytize wherever he went, but as a Swedenborgian.

And this is probably not his gravesite.

Some stories say he was buried down by the nearby river in a grave that's now unmarked and undiscovered. Other stories say he was, indeed buried in this family cemetery, the Archer Cemetery, in a grave that was also unmarked but whose location was confirmed by then-living witnesses to his funeral. 

There are even a couple of other headstones from the family cemetery still standing there:

As usual, this little side trip, meant to answer one small and not terribly interesting question--Where is Johnny Appleseed buried?--has inspired in me the desire for other moderately-related and definitely weirder side quests. Not only did I just go on a deep dive into Swedenborgianism, but now I have yet another tiny history museum to add to the map of weird places to go in Ohio that I should totally make.

And the curious little hill that Johnny Appleseed's marker stands on got me wondering if it's, in fact, a Native American mound. Researching that led me to this site with opinionated information about numerous little-known mounds in Indiana... and so obviously I had to ask my public library to buy this book for me.

If you've got littler homeschoolers, I'd say keep them away from the Nephilim speculation, ahem. Instead, might I suggest an autumn unit study or Midwest geography study that includes Johnny Appleseed, culminating in a field trip to his disputed gravesite, a day trip to an apple orchard, and then a following week full of all the apple crafts and activities?

Add the Swedenborgianism to your ongoing comparative religions study, of course.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

How to Sew a Button Back on Your Pants

This tutorial was originally posted on Crafting a Green World.

Alas, for the button has just popped off your pants! 

If you're lucky, it has simply fallen to the floor at your feet, ideally while you're getting dressed alone in your room surrounded by plenty of other suitable pants options. Of course, the way this year has been going, it's much more likely that your button has pinged off explosively in the middle of a crowded room, probably while you, yourself, are at the center of attention, and it has first smacked someone important in the eye and then fallen... somewhere, probably deep in a crack between the floorboards. And that was your only pair of nice pants. Fortunately, sewing a button back on your pants is a super easy and low-fuss skill that requires only a basic amount of hand-eye coordination. Anyone can do it!

Tools Needed

You will need:

Replacement Button

Look all over the inside of your pants and it's very likely that you'll find a couple of spare buttons sewn into a seam somewhere. Even this pair of fast-fashion H&M cargo shorts comes with two replacement buttons! If your pants didn't come with any spare buttons, however, you can use any same-sized button. Take a spare one from another pair of pants, perhaps, or ask around your local buy-nothing group.

Needle, Thread, Scissors, Seam ripper

Dig through your junk drawer until you find that travel sewing kit you got somewhere, or ask the hostess or concierge if you're somewhere public. If you do need to buy your supplies new, however, a small travel sewing kit is an inexpensive and practical purchase; look for one that has a seam ripper, a choice of pins and sewing needles, and a small selection of threads in basic colors.

Directions

As a quick note, in most cases, people want to mend their possessions to look as similar to new as possible, and that's okay! Don't be afraid, though, to have a little fun with your repair. With these shorts, I did use the spare button that came with them, primarily because it's a boring brown button. If I used a cute button from my stash then I'd just have one more boring brown button in my stash, instead, and I already have plenty of boring brown buttons, thank you very much. BUT, instead of boring brown thread, I used awesome fuchsia embroidery floss, because when I mend something I like to make it fun. Bonus: embroidery floss is very sturdy!

1. Pick Away Loose Threads

 

Your button likely left a mess of thread behind when it fell off. Use the seam ripper to pick all of that out, being careful not to pierce the fabric of your pants with its pointy end.

2. Stitch An X To Start

 When the loose threads are gone, you'll likely see evidence on the fabric of where the button stitching was. If you're lucky, you'll even see holes in the fabric from the stitching. 

 That's great because you want to sew your button back on exactly where it was before. Thread your needle, and using those holes if you have them, stitch a small x exactly where you want the center of your button to be. Buttons have to undergo a lot of pressure, and this x reinforces the button and your sewing.

 

3. Sew The Button To Your Pants

This part is a little tricky, so stay with me here: you can't simply sew the button directly to your pants. It feels obvious that you should be able to, but if you did, you wouldn't actually be able to button them, because there wouldn't be any room behind the button for the buttonhole fabric. Instead, when you sew the button to your pants, you have to leave a gap between the button and the pants. You're going to do that by holding something narrow--a pin from your sewing kit, perhaps, or the stabby bit of the seam ripper--against the top of the button as you sew it. Here's what it looks like: 

 In the above photo, I'm stitching up from the back of the fabric, using the same hole that I made stitching my starting x, pushing my needle up through one of the holes in the button, and pushing it down through another hole in the button and into the fabric, using another one of the holes that I made stitching my starting x. Before I pull the thread tight, I'm placing my seam ripper on top of the button, essentially sewing the seam ripper to the top of the button. This is the fiddliest part of the process, because you'll feel like you need one hand to hold the fabric, one hand to hold the needle, one hand to hold the button, and one hand to hold the seam ripper in place. Just try not to throw the whole thing across the room and after you've done a couple of passes, the seam ripper will stay put on its own. How many times you sew through the holes in your button is going to depend entirely on the width and quality of your thread. If you're using the thread that came with your travel sewing kit, it's probably on the flimsier side, and so you may need to sew through those holes eight or so times. With my embroidery floss, I only had to sew through each hole twice. With standard store-bought thread, a good number is around six.

4. Make The Button's Shank

 This is my favorite part! When you're satisfied that the button is secure, make sure your needle is at the back of the fabric, then remove the seam ripper and pull the button away from the fabric. Now you've got plenty of room for your pants to button! 

 Push your needle back through the fabric, then wrap it around the thread between the button and the fabric 6-8 times, forming the button's shank. When the shank looks nice and tidy and is completely covered by wrapped thread, stop wrapping so your shank doesn't get too bulky and push your needle back through the fabric.

 

5. Knot The Thread

Sew a stitch through your cross-stitch x, pull it snug, and knot it against the fabric. Cut away the excess thread. Although I used pants for my demo, this method works exactly the same, of course, for any button, whether it's on a shirt or a bag or a skirt. Shank buttons work differently, but you're not going to find those on a pair of pants.

College Tour: University of Michigan at Ann Arbor

 Never mind that Will isn't actually interested in applying to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor: we were in Michigan, near Ann Arbor, and I wanted to start our season of college tours!

Fun fact: I didn't visit a single college back when I was in high school applying to them. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, applied to colleges pretty much at random armed only with my own very miniscule amount of common sense, and wandered off to the college, sight unseen, that was both out of state and offered me the most scholarship money.

I really fell upwards in that scenario!

I might, then, be living a tiny bit vicariously through Will's college search process. Will has no interest in attending a big public university, but *I* was interested in seeing one, we were practically next door to it a few weekends ago, and a dry run at college tours, and a look at a college, even if it's one that your kid doesn't think she wants to attend, never hurts.

It looks like University of Michigan is offering in-person guided tours now, but it wasn't when we went, so Will and I pulled some interesting sites off of their self-guided tour resources to walk around and see. We'd both have LOVED to go inside every museum and library, as well, but alas that they were all closed, so I guess we had more of a sightseeing expedition than a college tour.

Wouldn't you know it, the coolest thing we saw wasn't even on the U of M campus, but on our way to it:

A delivery robot!

Remember when Will researched delivery robots as part of our Girl Scout Robotics badge lessons? And now we've seen one in the wild! I could not have been more excited if I had come across a literal celebrity out and about on the streets of Ann Arbor. 

Here's The Cube:

Here's the Law Quad:

Here's... a thing:

Here's some Virginia creeper, a vine that Matt is SO allergic to. It's probably good HE didn't go to school here!

Here's the brand-new University of Michigan Museum of Natural History, which Will and I would have given our right arms to have gone inside of:

Here's the Peony Garden, which was hopping!

Here's a willow:

Here's the Wave Field:

And here are some swings!

Will and I have been speaking a lot about her... close-mindedness, let's say, when it comes to college options. Her snap judgments. Her tendency, for instance, to dismiss a place like Yale outright simply because Yale had the audacity to send her a brochure through the mail. Honest to god, I have NO IDEA how she's going to choose a college, or, to be frank, how I'm going to let her go away from me to whatever college she does choose. But now, at least, we've got one unofficial, practice college tour under our belts!

I Took Nine Teenagers Camping, and We Had a Fabulous Time

 

I know that I say that every age with my kids and my Girl Scouts is my favorite, but these teenaged years really are my favorite!

Well, at least with my Girl Scouts. My own actual teenagers definitely have their moments...

Teenaged Girl Scouts, though? They are amazing. They're old enough to be independent, but young enough to play. They're old enough to follow directions, but young enough to still be enthusiastic about the arts and crafts projects that call for them. They're old enough to learn new advanced skills, but young enough to bravely try them out without self-consciousness. They're old enough to get along even with kids who aren't their besties, but young enough to still enjoy making up games and playing together. They're old enough to handle free time, but young enough to still enjoy spending that free time messing around down at the creek.

Troop Leader Brag Time: I recently had the PERFECT camping trip with nine of my teenaged Girl Scouts and two co-leaders. Everybody got along. Everybody was enthusiastic about all of our planned activities, and nobody complained of boredom during our downtime. All the adults took turns planning and running various activities, so nobody had too much work and everybody had plenty of breaks. All of our projects worked pretty much as planned. It didn't rain. Everybody ate, and everybody liked the food. The kids, both experienced and novice campers, all learned something new, and they all earned two badges and a fun patch. Nobody got injured bigger than a first-aid kit could handle. 

It was absolutely magical. 

Earning badges while camping is actually a bit of a challenge when you've got a larger troop of older Girl Scouts. All the camping-specific badges for older Scouts assume that you have a small troop of experienced campers. They're for things like backpack camping, survival camping, camping in unusual conditions such as snow or while mountain-climbing, etc. Those are all amazing skills to have, and older Scouts should definitely be able to work towards accomplishing them, but in order to take 13 kids on a Leave No Trace backpack camping trip in a state park or forest a driveable distance from my house, I'd have to take them in two separate groups on two separate weekends and convince at least one of my co-leaders to do the same. The logistics alone... just... well, I'm not going to rule a trip like that out, but let's just say there are logistics.

Also, I do tend to have a reliable group of the same kids who always sign up for troop camping trips, but I also tend to have a couple of less-experienced campers who get lured into every trip, which is AWESOME. I adore camping, and I adore taking kids camping, and every time a kid who'd describe herself as a non-campers gets snookered into coming camping with me I do a happy dance. But the thing about camping is that, in order to have a safe and enjoyable experience, you have to have a progression of skills. You can't take a kid who's never been camping backpack camping as her very first camping experience, or at least I wouldn't if I wanted her to ever want to come camping with me again! A kid who's only ever been car camping also needs to learn some skills before she goes full-on survival camping. 

This particular trip was a combo cabin/tent camping trip at an in-state Girl Scout camp, and I used it to ensure that every kid who attended left with the same basic camping skill set. They should feel confident cabin camping, car camping, and tent camping, and should have a very short learning curve to master just a few additional skills for backpack camping, survival camping, and camping in unusual conditions. To do that, I pulled out a couple of retired Girl Scout badges and IPs, and adjusted their requirements to achieve what I wanted.

Cadettes earned the retired Advanced Outdoor Cooking badge and the Cadette First Aid badge (and our Girl Scout camp's fun patch). Seniors and Ambassadors earned the retired Camping IP and the First Aid badge at their level (and the Girl Scout camp's fun patch). Everyone was offered the same activities, of course, regardless of if it was required for one of their particular badges, and anyone was welcome to opt out of any of the activities and have unstructured free time, instead, with the understanding that opting out of an activity required for one of their badges meant they wouldn't earn that badge.

Cadette Advanced Outdoor Cooking

For the retired Cadette Advanced Outdoor Cooking badge, we did the following activities:

• Demonstrate the ability to start a fire. Most of my troop knows how to start a fire, but some kids didn't, and this is a super important skill to be confident about. The best way to teach it is hands-on: I had the kids arrange themselves around our (thankfully generously-sized) fire pit, and I gave them each a box of matches and an egg carton fire starter. I spoke very briefly about how to start a fire and what to use and how to safely collect those items, we went over fire emergencies and I gave them a quick First Aid badge lecture on first aid for minor burns, and then I set them free to either learn or practice.

No matter how old they are, no matter how many times they've done it before, EVERY kid I've ever met loves to start a fire. The egg carton fire starters burn for a good ten minutes, so there's a lot of room for troubleshooting a poorly-set fire, and the more experienced kids automatically assisted the less confident ones in a way that was really sweet to watch.

And when everyone had built a fire, all the little fires were safe and sound in the fire pit, ready for our Dinner Prep Patrol to combine them into one big fire for hot dogs and s'mores!

• Learn and practice stick cooking. I was about 95% confident that every kid had roasted hot dogs and marshmallows on a stick before, but you never know! It's an easy dinner for the first night, and it gives me the chance to make sure everyone knows how to sanitize their roasting stick before use, not stab each other with burning metal, and clean their stick of sticky marshmallow afterwards.
• Learn and practice the three-tub method of dishwashing. Knowing how to wash dishes when you don't have a sink is crucial to your ability to keep yourself healthy, clean, and well-fed while camping. I demonstrated this method after dinner the first night, and for each meal afterwards the Clean-up Patrol set up the three tubs and washed the cooking and serving dishes, and everyone else washed their own dishes. By the time we went home, everyone had plenty of practice!
• Learn and practice pie iron cooking. This is a car camping staple, and a great way to make a regular backyard fire night fancier and more interesting. It's also an easy way to trick a hot breakfast with plenty of filling protein into teenager tummies! Since there would be people around our campsite for the whole day and a campfire is everyone's favorite part of camping, the Breakfast Prep Patrol started another big campfire for us (practicing those fire-starting skills!) and everyone had the opportunity to make themselves a grilled sandwich for breakfast, choosing among lunch meats, cheeses, peanut butter, jelly, and fruit. If you've never had a grilled peanut butter, jelly, and banana sandwich for breakfast, you should try it! I'll even let you sneak in some chocolate!
• Build and cook with tin can stoves and buddy burners. A tin can stove and a buddy burner are great tools to take on a backpack camping trip. They're light, portable, and will cook your food and boil your water almost as fast as a store-bought backpacking stove. And they're made entirely from literal trash!

This is a fairly time-consuming project, and it takes a LONG time for the wax to harden, so we made our stoves and buddy burners before lunch and used them to cook dinner. If you're going to make them while you're camping, you also need a campsite with electricity, as I brought both my crafts-only crock pots and used them to melt the wax for the buddy burners.

We followed my tutorial for making a tin can stove and buddy burner, and before we got started I gave a brief First Aid badge lecture on first aid for a cut or puncture. Amazingly, nobody needed to practice the first aid they'd learned during this project, although I had everyone use the manual can opener on my pocket knife and so I dulled it horribly and it definitely needs some first aid now.

For dinner that night, everybody heated up chili on their tin can stoves and used it to make either walking tacos or chili dogs. The placement of these stoves was very problematic, as the fire pit area was clearly not designed to accommodate nine tiny and hot stovetops. Fortunately, nobody stepped on a stove and nobody fell into the fire, so that's as much as anyone could ask!

I'd wanted everyone to have the chance to use their tin can stoves to make pancakes the next morning, but most of the kids had early pick-up times and I was afraid that the wax in their buddy burners wouldn't have time to solidify if I let them spend the morning cooking. Parents probably wouldn't appreciate molten wax spilled all over the trunks of their cars, right?

Oh, well. We'll make pancakes next time!

• Learn the uses for and sample dehydrated backpacking meals. My someday goal is to teach my troop how to make dehydrated backpacking meals from scratch, but during a pandemic is not the time for that. Thank goodness for super-expensive but super-fun store-bought backpacking meals, I guess!

Ramen is my secret gateway into the world of backpacking meals, because the kids are all OBSESSED with Ramen. I did bring some Ramen, but I also brought several selections of fancy dehydrated backpacking meals for the kids to choose from:

Just between us, I don't care much for any of these, but the kids LOVED them. The self-heating ones, in particular, were a major source of amazement and wonder for nine kids who'd been completely without internet for over 24 hours by that point.

• Make and sample trail mix. This is another activity that's so simple that you might not think to do it with older kids, but older kids still love it! Trail mix is so easy to make that a Daisy can do it, and yet so fun to make that my co-leader had to pre-portion the precious M&Ms to make sure that the kids shared them without fighting. 

Camping IP for Seniors and Ambassadors

I considered every activity that we did for the Cadette Advanced Outdoor Cooking badge as also part of the Camping IP, as well as these additional activities:

• Learn the basics of cabin and tent camping. This includes all the chores and housekeeping involved in setting up our campsite, maintaining it, and tearing it down at the end of our trip. Everyone was on a Patrol and had mealtime and cleaning chores, was responsible for the maintenance and cleaning of their cabin or tent, and followed all our troop rules for group camping.
• Learn useful knots for camping. One of our troop's co-leaders is a knot-tying genius, and she taught the kids several useful knots:

The kids' knot-tying handiwork included learning how to make clotheslines between trees, and that led to what might have been their favorite activity:

• Do a camp craft. Our other co-leader set up an activity in which both kids and adults dyed T-shirts with water pistols! It was so ridiculously fun, and the shirts came out great.

Later, the kids went through the trouble of painstakingly rinsing out all the water pistols so they could have a water fight.

• Make egg carton fire starters. The kids made these at the same time as they made the buddy burners, using the wax leftover after they filled all their burners:

Each kid took home a few to empower their own fire-building at family events, and I put several back in our troop stash to replace the ones we'd used during the camping trip.

CSA First Aid badge

Here are the activities that the Cadettes, Seniors, and Ambassadors used to earn the First Aid badge at their own level:

• Learn first aid for cuts and burns. We covered these lessons during our tin can stove building and fire-starting activities.
• Make a backpack first-aid kit. One of our troop's co-leaders cut out felt first-aid kits that the kids could applique and hand-sew with embroidery floss, and I used troop money to buy enough supplies for each kid to stock her kit. I was adamant that I wasn't going to buy my Scouts "white kid" band-aids, so I was stoked to find this colorful set!

• Discuss and practice wilderness survival. We covered a LOT of ground with this step! It probably could have been an outdoor survival badge on its own, but the kids were so interested and engaged that perhaps we'll try that another time, enabling us to go even deeper into the topic and explore more skills. We discussed proper preparation for outdoor adventures, the importance of the buddy system, and the emergency supplies you should always carry with you during outdoor adventures. And even though I promised myself that I would not terrify the children with tales taken from my Special Interest, People Who Die in the Wilderness (Particularly National Parks), I did, indeed tell them tales of People Who Died in in the Wilderness. 

Our knot expert showed the kids how they could use the knots she'd taught them to make an emergency shelter, and we discussed ways that one could further insulate the shelter and incorporate a fire for warmth. We discussed the things that you DO need in order to survive until rescue--warmth, water, comfort--and the things that you DON'T need in order to survive until rescue--food, moving around. 

Later that night, I brought out this kit and taught the kids to make paracord bracelets so that they'd always have some cordage with them on their adventures. It was a little wild and wooly at times, teaching nine teenagers a fairly process-oriented craft, but all of them got the hang of it and made bracelets that they were happy with. Some of the kids got so into it that they wanted to make even more bracelets, so I gave them some of the extra paracord from the kit to take home and promised them that we could try some different designs next time. I'm looking forward to that even more than they are!

• Learn and practice wilderness evacuation scenarios. We had the most hilarious time with this! I taught the kids a few of the easier emergency evacuation methods: One-Person Walk Assist, Firefighter Carry, Two-Person Clothes Drag, and Two-Person Seat. Sometime I'll bring a blanket and a couple of poles and also teach them the Blanket Drag and Pole and Blanket Stretcher, but the kids had plenty of fun trying out just the ones I showed them. 
• Learn emergency methods for purifying water. If you're backpack or survival camping, you'll have a portable water purification method, so for this step we simply discussed ways that you could purify water in an emergency, such as boiling it or adding a little bleach or iodine. 

I kind of can't believe that we got through THAT MANY activities, and still had time for hiking, wading in the creek, hanging out by the fire, having water fights, visiting the camp llamas, and eating endless s'mores, but we did, and didn't feel feel ruled by an agenda or rushed for time, either. Somehow, the nature sprites that rule that Girl Scout camp must have sensed that these nine kids and three adults needed this perfect, magical, happy camping experience after fifteen months of everything else that we've been doing. It makes me glad to think back on the confident campers who left that campground, the campers who can build their own fires and cook on their own homemade stoves, the campers who can keep themselves safe and alive if they're ever lost in the woods, the campers who can evacuate someone in an emergency, the campers who fell in love with knot-tying, the campers who got to have, at long, long, last, a practically normal weekend with their friends. 

And before we left for home, some of those campers even offered their suggestions for what our NEXT camping trip should include!

The Easiest DIY Newspaper Seed Starting Pots

This tutorial was originally published on Crafting a Green World in 2017.

Seriously, y'all, these are the easiest seed starting pots on the planet. There's no origami involved. No fancy tools. Heck, making these seed starting pots is even easier than opening the packaging on store-bought seed starting supplies! 

 I LOVE these DIY newspaper seed starting pots, because you can make them as-needed, and there's no waste-you plant your sprouted seedlings right in this pot, which decomposes to enrich the soil and allow your baby plant's roots to spread. No trauma to the babies, nothing to carry to the trash bin--it's a double win!

DIY Newspaper Seed Starting Pots

All you need are: 

  newspaper. If you don't take the newspaper yourself, just ask around. A single day's paper is enough to give you plenty of pots to start out with. 

  beer bottle. A hardship to obtain, I know. If you don't have one, I know for a fact that you have something similar on hand. Check your pantry. Check your fridge. I know you can do this! 

  plant markers (optional). You can write the name of the plant directly onto the newspaper pot with Sharpie, and the writing will last long enough for you to get the pot into the ground, but I paid my kid a penny a pop to write me a bunch of plant markers onto popsicle sticks, and you know what? Those work just as well as the cuter plant markers. 

 1. Rip your newspaper right down the middle. Don't use the ad flyers, and don't use the Sunday comics (because you're saving those for wrapping paper, right?). But all the other sections? Just go ahead and rip them all right down the middle. 

 2. Wrap a strip of newspaper around your beer bottle. You want about two inches of of the strip to hang off of the bottom of the bottle, so I find that lining the top of the strip up along the top edge of the beer bottle's label works well. Keep wrapping the strip around the bottle until it's all wrapped up--you'll overlap it on the bottle a few times, which will make your pot stronger. 

 3. Fold in the bottom of the newspaper cylinder. Neatly fold it up against the base of the bottle, all the way around. 

  4. Slide the newspaper seed starting pot off of the beer bottle. When it's free, give the bottom fold a good crease all the way around. Once you set it in a tray and fill it with damp soil, it will learn to keep that fold, and by the time you're ready to plant, you may have to rip it or snip it with scissors to open the bottom back up. 

 These newspaper seed starting pots don't last forever, obviously, what with staying damp and being filled with dirt, but they will last for more than long enough to grow your plants from seed to good, sturdy plant start. If you set them in a tray, you'll also be able to gently water them by putting water only in the tray and letting the newspaper wick the water up to the rest of the pot.