Don’t Throw That Out Yet: Creative Crafting in the Age of Coronavirus

Cashel Manning, 9, and his brother Rhys, 7, recently cut up clean milk jugs to create a Jai-Lai game - a ball game of Basque origin. Valerie Wehring, 11, spent an afternoon transforming a Ghirardelli cake mix box into a puppet named Penny. Other local Buzz-area kids are using plastic take-out container lids as painting pallets. 

These children’s parents pulled the ideas from a new Facebook group - Don't Throw That Out Yet - created by West University resident and author Liz Wilder and a college friend in California. Wilder wanted to recreate the craft projects she did years ago with her now grown children, but with a twist: using materials from the packages people are getting at home, as deliveries are even more prevalent in the age of the coronavirus.

“This is my little way of helping,” says Wilder. “With working and homeschooling, a lot of parents are having a tough time now.” Families can use fun crafting ideas as a way to keep kids busy and thinking creatively, she says.

Projects posted in the Don't Throw That Out Yet group include a giant paper airplane made from an entire sheet of newspaper and staples, a self-watering mini-terrarium made from a Cuties tomato box - Wilder’s begonia cutting doubled overnight - and a woven paper heart from junk mail. Wilder learned how to make woven paper hearts - a tradition in Scandinavia - years ago from her kids’ Danish nanny.

Julia Kuck Manning of West U says her sons Cashel and Rhys are loving the clever ideas. “They’re on a mission to create crafts and projects from all sorts of stuff lying around the house now,” she says. “They can’t wait to have an empty milk jug or small shampoo bottle.” 

Liz Wilder (holding a handmade baby sweater) started the craft projects group with a college friend.

Wilder and her friend, Suzanne Attenborough, a community volunteer and needlepoint instructor in California, met in college at Wellesley and loved crafting together. “It’s part of what’s kept us friends for more than 40 years,” Wilder says.

When stay-at-home orders went into effect, the friends crafted together over Zoom. Wilder also pulled out her box of wool yarn to make sweaters but found she didn’t have enough to make adult sweaters, so knit baby ones. “For my future grandchildren,” she says, “even though my kids aren’t even married yet.”

She needed another crafting outlet, so, not long after, the two friends decided to share project ideas online that featured recyclable materials. Another recent project on the crafting Facebook page features paper fortune tellers. Wilder made a humorous one for a neighbor. On one flap she wrote “Your parents will get you a puppy.” 

Projects in the coming weeks could include a how-to on making a sock puppet and a matchbox car garage. The friends’ hope is that parents and kids will also share their own unique project ideas, using what they have at home and recyclables to create.

Woven hearts are a tradition in Scandinavia. See her Facebook group for more craft ideas.

How to Make a Woven Paper Heart from Junk Mail:
Wilder uses two different colored sheets to show the weaving.

• Cut two papers into matching rounded U shapes. 
• Slit from the base toward the curve evenly on both pieces of paper so you’re creating several long strips. 
• Weave together just like a potholder to create the heart shape. 

Editor's note: Read more about creative kids who turn "trash into treasure" here. Read about Liz Wilder's sailing adventures here.