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8 Road Trip DIY Ideas

8 Road Trip DIY Ideas

Thank you so much for sharing!

Hey Everyone!

I have a fun video and post for you today, 8 Road Trip DIYs – perfect for a long car ride or vacation!  My husband and I recently went on a weekend trip to SF and I brought several things along to keep my hands busy!  I did some of the driving, but my husband likes to drive – so that gave me time to make some things 😉

1.Loom Knitting

This is my personal favorite. I actually made a hat on my road trip up to San Francisco!  I have a tendancy to get car sick and I can do this without getting sick.  Because you basically wrap the yarn around the pegs, you don’t need to look at the pegs to wrap them leaving you time to look away and watch the horizon and the road to keep from getting car sick.

2.Sketchbook

Bring a small pack of colored pencils or travel paints to sketch and doodle on your road trips!  Whether you want to practice figure drawing, a new font design or sketching out a new beautiful flower you found – it’s peaceful, relaxing, portable and you don’t need electricity haha.

3.Create Quilt Designs or Cross stitch designs

Along the same lines as a sketchbook, you can find graph paper notebooks for you to draw out quilt blocks, whole quilt designs or even cross stitch patterns!

4. Cross Stitch

I love cross stitch. I feel like it is easier than embroidery since you are just making an “x.” Start with something very simple or even get really complicated – up to you!

5. Embroidery

Hand embroidery is one of my favorite crafts. It simple yet beautiful and still requires a bit of creativity with subtle stitch variation, floss weight, color and different stitches you can do.  I started a new embroidery project on the way home from our San Francisco trip – I took lots of breaks and didn’t worry about my stitches being perfect to avoid getting car sick.

6.English Paper Piecing

This is a very popular option, especially in the quilting community.  English paper piecing or EPP for short is a way for you to use papers and wrap fabric around it, glue it in place and then hand stitch the pieces together. I have a whole video series teaching how to do this if you are interested!

7.Travelers Notebook

My favorite way of scrapbooking is to do it on the go.  I know myself and I will never take the time to do it after the fact with all of my other creative endeavors.  If I bring some minimal supplies, a portable printer and the the notebook needed, I can complete the project on the go – I personally like this method much better ;).

8.Crochet Project

Here is my crochet playlist with all of my crochet tutorials, there’s a lot! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL233wsmULhHiQdZMfqHUOvrHSPh-OQKgc

Of course I can’t forget my crocheters out there, and crochet is one of my most favorite portable projects EVER. A smaller crochet project would be better to bring on a road trip than a large afghan of course.  Crochet tends to make me a little sick in the car, but I always bring a crochet project for hotel room evenings or camping trips!

9.Audio books

This last one isn’t really a DIY and certainly not a craft project, but I find that many creative types love audio books if they already know about them if if not they fall in love with this medium! I listen in my studio while I’m creating all the time and road trips are a great time to listen as well which was why I wanted to include it. I listen to at least one book per month – and my all time favorite book on audio so far is The Help. The main characters are performed by different voice actors so you learn the voices of the different characters and it’s like listening to a play. I loved it!

Here is the full video

darla coffman

Friday 30th of June 2017

Thank you Melanie for all of your tips for road trips. Can't wait to try the loom for making a hat. I love to crochet so this would be a wonderful project

Nancy

Friday 16th of June 2017

Does the little printer work with android phones? Such a great idea! Love your videos!!! I full time RV with my hubby so these are great ideas!

Bless your home~

delia holliday

Friday 9th of June 2017

Thank you for all your wonderful tips I love to crochet in the car on a family day out I sit in the back of the car with my grandson joel he is ten we both have a thing that holds our DVD players cups and all the things we need to see at a glance it hangs over the back of the front seat head rest we'll have a fun time and once again thanks for all your tips and the time you take out for us from Delia (Dee) from Leeds in West Yorkshire England

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