Kick-butt home improvement, by women for women (or anyone with a glue gun).

The arts and crafts movement has heralded a new era of DIY, an alterna-consumer culture for “roll your sleeves up” boys and girls with a penchant for putting the three Rs into messy (and oftentimes beautiful) practice. We’ve got our resident DIY maestro Sofie Sausser who is always challenging us to turn trash into treasure and put our rolling pins to better use.

And there’s a plethora of other “Can Do” DIY mavens of the web that inspire us each and every day. Here are a few of our favorites that make us believe that – yes! – we, too, can cross stitch, color block and power-saw our way to off-the-big-box-store-grid independence.

Get ready for a “nuh duh” moment: A Beautiful Mess is one of the best DIY/lifestyle blogs out there. Elsie and Emma dedicate themselves to helping you create the most beautiful, inspired life possible. Notable new projects include these honeycomb bookshelves and this excellent pictorial on how to make your own house stamp:

Karen, a TV host from Canada, is a self-professed cheap and crafty fix-it girl with a blog called The Art of Doing Stuff. She’s installed her own central vac, does her own wiring, plumbing and drywalling, and avidly answers reader questions on all things practical and fanciful. Her philosophy is “it’s not as hard as you think…You can do it yourself, cheaper, faster and it will make your life simpler.” Prime example, her recent chicken coop poop control center.

Mandi from Vintage Revivals is lovable and cute because, well, she can’t seem to help it. But hers is more than a pretty blog and her tutorials take the whole room, woman and budget into account. Just look at what she can do with $150. 

Jen Ramos is the definition of DIY. The graphic designer, blogger and retailer behind Made by Girl is like a walking glossy mag with a perennially stylish and fresh focus on interior design, food and fashion. The talented Jane of all Trades is also an accomplished typographical artist, fearlessly open about her personal beliefs and has appeared in Ladies Home Journal, Marie Claire, HGTV and just about everywhere else.

All you need to know about Kirsten Nunez of Studs & Pearls is that she’s “convinced DIY is the best form of self expression.” We love her take on the Composition Notebook and her reconstructed polaroid postcard series.

Making Nice in the Midwest seriously caught our eye with this papier mâché hand hooks DIY and we’ve been stalking ever since.

1.) Take a bottle…

2.) Add some yarn…and you’ve got yourself a Pinterest sensation: another whimsical creation from Rachael Smith of Penelope and Pip who, seriously, just sits down and comes up with this stuff.

The same thinking applies to this yarn stool over at BRIGG, the flawlessly stylish Scandinavian blog.

We might not fully understand the instructions (being in Norwegian, as they are), but we know inspired blogging and DIY-ing when we see it. It just clicks.

Image: Morning Theft

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