TikTok has been consuming most of everyone’s daily lives including but not limited to, adapting new eating habits, living habits, and crafts inspiration. Some people were inspired to start a business while others started new hobbies or changed their house decor. Now that the pandemic is nearly over, let’s recap the 2020-2021 trending crafts and room changes throughout the pandemic. Whether you’ve tried them out or not, see how you can pass time during post-quarantine.
Jewelry
If your outfits have been looking incomplete, it’s probably from the lack of jewelry you’re wearing. If you have jewelry on but basic metal rings aren’t working for you anymore, try chunky rings, wire rings, or bead rings. Instead of spending money on them from etsy, making it yourself would be much cheaper and you would make what you’re specifically interested in.
Melted bead rings
Materials: Beads, straightener, parchment paper, tweezer
Steps:
- Heat up straightener
- Select the amount of rings that you think will fit you
TIP: Beads will expand when they melt so don’t pick too many
- Put piece of parchment paper on the bottom flat iron to prevent your straightener from getting ruined
- Place beads on with tweezer
- Put another piece of parchment paper on top of beads
- Put flat irons together and squeeze lightly until flat enough
- Quickly take it off of the parchment paper with a tweezer and bend the rings into a circle to go onto your finger
Beaded flower rings
Materials: Seed beads the size of your liking, elastic, scissor
Steps:
- Cut how much elastic string you will need
- Put 4 beads of the color that you want to be your petals on your string
- Choose another color that you want to be the center of your flower
- Insert string through the first bead
- Insert 3 more beads on string
- Insert string through the bead next to the center bead at the bottom
- Insert however many beads you need that will fit your ring and tie it
TIP: Put two beads at the end of the ring to put string though so it can be tied better
Credit: Sanjana’s melted bead ring and beaded rings on a air dry clay trinket dish
Polymer Clay rings
Materials: Polymer clay, cooking roller, knife, glaze, ring rod or object that is the size of the desired finger you want it to be on
Steps:
- Pick the color of your choice
- Cut off a piece from the block
- Flatten it with cooking roller to make the base of your ring
- In order to sculpt the ring to fit the size of your finger
TIP: Use an object such as a marker, chapstick, or whisk handle
- Sculpt it how you want, there are many designs such as making frog rings or something as simple as squiggly rings.
- Bake if instructions says so
Wire rings
Materials: 20 gauge wire, pliers that can cut wires, beads
Steps:
- Select the amount of wire you’ll think will be a little more than enough and cut it
- But bead in the middle of the wire
- Wrap the part with the bead around your finger or object about 4 times
TIP: Ring gets smaller as you start wrapping wire so if you want it to fit your ring finger, use your thumb as the place to wrap it around
- Take ring off
- Take the leftover ends of the wires and wrap it around the bead
- Then take the rest of the wire to wrap it from inside to the outside of the ring
Clouds
Can’t go out because you aren’t vaccinated yet? Make glowing clouds for your wall! This is created by sticking polyester stuffing to the wall or water bottle to make it look like you’re sitting between fluffy clouds. To make the clouds glow, people add LED lights to the wall in a disarranged order or stuff the bottles with fairy lights.
Hanging clouds
TIP: Polyester attracts spiders so spray spider repellent on finished product.
Materials: Water bottle, LED lights or fairy lights, hot glue gun, polyester, fishing line string, tap or hook, spider repellent
Steps:
- Insert two holes on the bottle
- Insert string through the two holes
- If using LED lights, stick it on the bottle. If using fairy lights, place it inside bottle and glue batteries on top
- Hot glue polyester on bottle
- Spray with spider repellent
- Hang on ceiling
Cloud wall
TIP: LED lights only because polyester is flammable so you can’t put it directly on top of fairy lights
Materials: LED lights, cardboard panels, hot glue gun, polyester, command strips, spider repellent
- Place LED lights across cardboard panels randomly
TIP: You can’t place polyester directly on ceiling with hot glue because it will ruin your wall and it’ll be harder to do so cardboard panel is a must
- Hot glue polyester onto cardboard panel
- Use strong tape such as command strips when putting it on the wall
Credit: Sanjana’s hanging clouds
Planting
After weeks of trying to keep a simple cactus alive, most people got the hang of planting and soon started decorating their whole room with them. Getting a green thumb has been common for bored people stuck at home. Although everything’s about to open again, now that spring has arrived, it’s the best time to start!
Wall
If you have a simple white wall, a cheap but creative way to decorate it would be to create some drawings or paintings and cover your wall with it. While others have walls filled with posters, others created art on CDs to put them up. Or use FedEx to print out posters and decorate your wall with them.
Credit: Sanjana’s wall
Glass frames
Safiyah Alli has done clay crafts, glass paintings and spotify glass, and paints on canvases. “Before making the crafts I was bored and looking for art ideas, during it I was happy and relaxed, and after I was proud and tired.”
Glass painting
Materials: Image, glass from picture frame, fine point sharpie or paint pen, paint, paintbrush
- Find an image online that you would like to trace
- Revert the image and print it out
- Tape paper under glass frame
- Trace with fine point sharpie or paint pen
- Paint highlights first
TIP: Don’t stroke paint brush because it will cause see through areas. Instead, stack paint on top of each other by dabbing a lot of paint onto frame
- Paint the rest of the painting
Credit: Safiyah Alli’s glass painting
Room decor
Dollar Tree used to be stereotyped as a store for people in the lower income class to shop at. The popularity in transforming a $1 item to something so beautiful such as vases and shelves has skyrocketed since users on TikTok have shared their transformations. Mostly from drab and “boring” supplies such as shelves, mirrors, tables, etc to beautiful pieces under a budget.
Credit: Sanjana’s shelves from Ddollar Ttree
Faijul Fahim hasn’t done any crafts over the pandemic but has taken his free time to spend time with his family and friends instead. “Over the years I lost my interest in Arts & Crafts since I didn’t have an interest in it anymore plus I’m not even creative like others are. I do regret not utilizing my free time to its fullest because I tend to feel lazy at times.” The point of arts and crafts is not to turn it into a hobby, but to express oneself and many TikTok or Pinterest viewers have realized that throughout this long year we’ve experienced.
