Useful links for crafts and do-it-yourself lovers

This post is useful for crafts and do-it-yourself lovers who want to spend their time wisely doing some creative work. Parents or teachers who want to do these crafts activities for themselves or to teach to their younger ones can get lots of ideas, tips or simply follow the step by step instructions to make many crafts. Crafting and making things by hand is a fun and entertaining way to spend time and it helps you to be creative and innovative.

* 'All Free Crafts' offers crafts for kids, nature, bath and body crafts, easy homemade gift ideas, gardening tips and projects, Christmas, Valentine, Easter or Halloween crafts and candle making ideas.

* 'Craftbits' is a site with lots of ideas, tips and crafts projects. It is created by a mother and daughter having experience in crafts, teaching and selling it via their own gift store. Both launched it to provide resources for teachers, therapists, and craft enthusiasts in the year 1999.

* 'Amazing Moms' has many crafts which can be searched according to catagory starting from yound children to school going kids.

* 'Craft Place' online space for crafters to connect with other crafters, share projects, ideas, make suggestions, and find inspiration. Craftplace is owned and operated by the Craft & Hobby Association (CHA) which is an association of companies within the craft industry.
Through the Creators Exchange, the Craftplace social networking community, you can create your own crafty place on the web. also brings you the best crafting content, resources, ideas and inspiration from around the web. But this is your site, designed around your passion for all things craft with most pages providing you the opportunity make content suggestions and interact with the site.

* At 'Kabooze' you can find posts and ideas about crafts, holidays, family-fun, recipes, parenting, health, and lifestyle.

* 'Tipz Time' is a site offering Home and Garden Tips and Ideas.

What you can find at the site?

- Household tips, spring cleaning hints, organizing, and stain removal.

- You can search for holiday crafts, food tips, frugal money and timesavers.
Free printable calendars, and charts for parents, family, moms, teachers and homeschoolers.

- Tips for bathroom, kitchen, diningroom, livingroom, bedroom, babies, computer, crafts, food, sewing, kids, family, holiday, home, money, moving, pets, photography, travel, outdoor, bugs, health, cleaning stains, and more!

More sites with crafts ideas or projects:

* 'Craft idea' has hundreds of free craft ideas for the whole family. It is crafting with paper, wood, fabric or basic craft materials, you can find here over 80 step-by-step illustrated tutorials explaining basic techniques and showing you how a particular craft got created from the beginning to the end.

* 'Crafty tips' offers free crafty tips.

* 'All free crafts blog'

How to learn calligraphy?

I am in love for calligraphy from the very young age and being a calligrapher myself I was appreciated well when I joined the teaching profession. I still love to learn and teach about beautiful writing which is called 'calligraphy'. This post is for the people who want to learn it online or get some tips to start it as a hobby. There is a good variety of stuff online which can help you to learn or start it but the material or helping books can be purchased online or offline from your nearest crafts or stationary supply store.

* The best site without any ads is 'cmc gavren' which has been selected as one of the best educational resources on the Web by StudySphere, one of the Internet's fastest growing educational resources for students, teachers and parents. It provides step by step easy lessons to learn 'calligraphy'

* 'Calligraphy Centre' helps you learn how to start or begin this hobby. There are many helpful links, articles, and tips.

* 'Cynscribe' is a resource for calligraphers,lettering artists, typographers, graphic designers, paper decorators, scrapbookers, greeting card makers,book designers and artist bookmakers.

* 'Studio arts' is a very popular site which has been visitied over one million since 1997.

'Studio arts' says: 'Calligraphy means"beautiful writing." Calligraphy can be both a delight to the eye and an inspiration to the spirit. In our technological age, the appreciation for the art of calligraphy has grown incredibly. Calligraphy is a fun hobby, a great business, and a creative art.'

* 'The Calligraphy pen' is a blog where you can find calligraphy pen use, buying guide and maintenace tips.

* 'Scribblers blog'

* Calligraphy sites at 'The craft directory'

A directory to find out art and craft sites -'The Craft Directory'

Being a subject teacher for art and crafts in early years, I usually search the net for useful links and ideas for my lesson plan. I enjoy teaching crafts projects to young children and my learning journey continues as I learn new and exciting ideas from the internet. There are many educational sites which offer useful links, resources and ideas relating to drawing, art and crafts. But I prefer to start searching at specific places becasue it saves your time.

The Craft Directory is a place to search for art and crafts related sites. You can definately save your time by starting search from this directory as I found a long list of topics and there is a list of sites under each catagory. You need to click the link and a drop down list of sites would come with a short description of that site. I just checked if results are good or not and clicked for 'Calligraphy' link. As I had a saved file at my hard drive about calligraphy sites, I knew many of the sites in advance and I was happy to find more sites with useful information about the topic.

Have fun sharing your failure stories

Simply failed is created with the idea to share our thoughts about 'failure'. Because failure is a harsh reality of life which we can face with a smiling face by sharing our experiences and thoughts.

How to use the site?
You simply post what you think a Fail is. Now That should be very simple and if we think the fail is worth a mention on Simply Failed we will approve it. Then other users will get to vote for their favorite Fail’s by hitting the vote button.

Among top fails there are some interesting sharings:

- Fail is when you dress up as gangster and think you run the streets. The sad part is that you live in the suburbs in a nice house and your dads an engineer & mom’s a doctor.

- Fail is when you think your cool smoking.... Your mom some how ends up passing by and sees you smoking ends up getting out the car and slapping the hell out of you in front of the whole school. Many kids end up recording this Drama. I guess you ain't cool no more?

- Fail is when your friend thinks he is in love to a girl that he had never ever talked to her before and ends up listening to depressing music and becoming depressed...all for a girl who does not even know that he exists…. FAIL

Share your failure experience with all and have fun.

Chance to win an apple Iphone:

Write a fail story, become facebook fan, follow them on twitter and share your thoughts by commenting on the stories. The site will make the final decision and choose the winner. The person who has the best story will get an Iphone.
They are giving away 2 more iphones to random follower on twitter, a facebook fan or a random commenter.

This contest is worldwide and is opened to anyone . We will use FEDEX to send the Iphones and the contest ends on December 20th, 2009.

What impression your face makes on others?

Face is the reflection of our personality and people in media take extreme care of their looks and face because it is the first thing to notice.

Do you know what impression your face makes when you meet a new person? or when someone watches your picture what impression she/he takes?

Usually we get the comments or praise from the family, friends and community people living around us about our face. What about having some fun and getting the comments from many people around the net about your face?

Speaking faces provides an interesting opportunity for all internet users to submit their picture for free, create an account and get the comments from other users of this site.

It is really interesting to know what impression you make because they say "First Impression Counts"

Site link: Speaking faces

Note: You can win iPods (5 in number) from the site.
Details are:

All you need to do to win one of five iPods:

Add your picture to SpeakingFaces.com
Receive the highest number of opinions on the first impression you make until January 31st, 2010

- First prize, an iPod nano 16GB Silver, will go to the person who receives the highest number of votes.
- Second prize, an iPod shuffle 4GB Black, will go to the person who receives the second highest number of votes
- Third prize, an iPod shuffle 2GB Blue, will go to the person who receives the third highest number of votes
- Fourth prize, an iPod shuffle 2GB Green, will go to the person who will receives fourth highest number of votes
- Fifth prize, an iPod shuffle 2GB Pink, will go to the person who will receives the fifth highest number of votes

By signing up and activating your account you will automatically be entered into competition to win an iPod!
Promotion commences 1:00AM GMT on October 11, 2009.
Entries close 5:00PM GMT on January 31, 2010.