My craft designing career started with a macaroni and cheese box. You know the ones — those tallish boxes that every brand of mac & cheese “from a box” comes in. The Mac&Cheese House used all the great virtues of those boxes: their uniformity, the size and proportions, the color of the paperboard, the sharp folds. Ever try to make a sharp fold in paperboard? It’s not that easy, never mind making four perfectly parallel ones.
Anyway, that’s what a Right Now Crafts craft is. Taking an everyday, free material, learning what features and qualities it has to offer, adapting those features to an end product you’d like to have, and figuring out the steps to get from start to finished. I don’t have an instant formula for doing that but I do have a rough list of things to think about. Try it out with the next awesome recyclable that comes your way!
Use your eyes and hands to see what features the material has: printing, folds, stiffness, lightness, corners, flaps, seams, the overall proportions or size. Where is is strongest? Does it bend? What color is it? Can it get wet? Maybe it already suggests an end product to you.
Look for natural divisions or sections, like seams, staples, embossed lines, folds. These can be starting points for giving the material a new shape or size, or cutting it into more than one piece.
Think about transformations. Some things I do in my crafts are cutting a new shape, bending or folding, adding light, decorating the surface, adding movement, or partially cutting and then twisting or bending. Also, turning things inside-out! Your material might let you do other things as well.
You can add connectors and fasteners, like tape, staples, paper clips, string, or glue stick.
Have fun exploring new materials. I’d love to see what you come up with!
Thank you for reading! If you have questions, please drop me a line.