10 of the top DIY craft kits to keep you busy at home

A new year, a new lockdown, a new – and more creative – you? While there’s plenty of educational resources in the way of online craft courses and workshops, shopping for the right materials and tools can be a more daunting task. Whether you’re just looking to take up a hands-on pastime this winter or fulfil a new year’s resolution to get more crafty, kick-start your making with these DIY craft kits you can enjoy from the comfort of your own home.

CAST

Give loved ones (or yourself) the gift of jewellery with CAST’s bespoke jewellery making kit. The premise is simple: carve your design in wax, drop it in a protective tin and mail it back to the Sheffield-based studio, where expert silversmiths will cast and finish your piece in solid sterling silver. From rings to pendants, charms and cufflinks, the creative possibilities are vast. For extra flair, you can opt for add-ons including gold plating, stone setting, engraving or upgrading the base metal.

Bespoke Jewellery Making Kit, pre-order from £29. Casting, from £60

Mäe Ceramics

While its in-studio classes are on hold, southeast London-based Mäe Ceramics – aka Lilly Maetzig – has created Home Mäed Clay Kits for budding potters to continue crafting at home. Each kit includes enough of Mäe’s signature speckled stoneware clay (either 2.5kg or 5kg) for a set of cups, as well as a Mäe towel to work on and a hand-drawn instructional zine for quick reference. You will also have access to a video tutorial covering studio set-up and the three main hand-building techniques. Once you’ve finished making, there is an option to bring your pots back to the Mäe Ceramics studio to have your work fired and glazed (post-lockdown, of course).

Home Mäed Clay Kit, from £50-£85

Marmor Paperie

Marbling is as therapeutic as it is forgiving: there’s no right or wrong way to approach this kid-friendly craft and the results are always pleasingly beautiful. ‘You don't need artistic skills or previous experience,’ says Lucy McGrath of Mamor Paperie, ‘just a healthy dose of creativity and a willingness to get messy.’ Marmor Paperie’s beginner’s kit contains everything you will need to start creating your own marbled papers in the Turkish tradition, using thickened water to float your paints on.

Beginner’s Complete Marbling Kit, £45-£62

Willow & Finn

Surrey-based Nicola Males first began making environmentally-minded, hand-poured candles for herself and friends, and then for the customers who frequented her bakery in the village of Shepperton. Through Willow & Finn, she now offers a range of 100% sustainable soy candles, and other wellness products to lift the spirit and relax the mind. Though the pandemic may have extinguished her plans for candle-making workshops (for now, at least), Willow & Finn have created a version to enjoy from home. The Luxe candle making kit comes complete with mood-boosting essential oils from the Willow & Finn range, soy wax, a metal bain-marie (to aid with melting the wax over a saucepan) and whisk, a digital thermometer, amber glass jars and a cardboard box with a magnetic close to keep your supplies neatly packed away.

Luxe Candle Making Kit – Mood Boosting, £49 (with free delivery)

Sculpd

The therapeutic benefits of pottery is science, say self-styled ‘clay geeks’ Sculpd: forming and manipulating clay stimulates neural input from almost all of our senses, including our touch/tactile input and visual pathways, which communicate with both the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Most helpfully for home crafters, there’s no kiln required to become a clay master with Sculpd’s pottery kit, which uses a soft and supple air-drying clay that dries in a light grey colour and with a smooth surface suitable for painting. Each clay kit contains enough material to create four or more pinch pots (or two larger plant pots) – though plenty of amateur potters have let their imaginations run wild.

Sculpd Pottery Kit, £39

Wool and the Gang

Have you ever looked at a knitting pattern and felt like you were reading an indecipherable language? Enter Wool and the Gang, which is on a mission to ‘make learning to knit as easy as A, B, C’, one knitting kit at a time. Kits range from beginners to advanced, so there’s plenty of ambitious designs for aspiring knitters to work towards. Its global ‘knitwork’ has a world of crafty knowledge at their needle tips, and help is only ever a click away thanks to its exhaustive collection of YouTube tutorials.

Wool and the Gang knitting kits, prices vary

Yodomo

Yodomo – a portmanteau of ‘You Do More’ – takes the fuss out of finding the right gear by delivering craft kits to your door. Supplemented by online workshops, there’s a wealth of craft kits available, from macrame to textile dyeing, printmaking to Japanese boro stitching from different makers. We’re particularly enamoured with this cyanotype embroidery hoop kit from photographer and designer Emma Mapp, which combines analogue printmaking, photography and textiles.

Yodomo craft kits, prices vary

Crown Works Pottery

For Giulietta Hextall of Crown Works Pottery, her Make at Home clay kits have provided the studio with a lifeline while its workshops remain suspended. Suitable for all levels of potters, these kits cover the fundamental hand-building techniques with an informative booklet, as well as providing inspiration for shapes and professional potter’s tips. It’s one of the more robust ceramics kits available, coming with 3kg, 6kg, 9kg or 12kg of clay for the especially ambitious (for reference, a large mug requires about 500g). Once your masterpiece is complete, you can drop it off in person for firing and glazing (this typically takes up to three weeks), or carefully wrap and send it to the east London studio.

Make at Home clay kits, from £45-£120, firings and glazing included

Stitch & Story

‘Crafting has always been seen as a break from being in front of a screen but now, with people spending more time at home, interest has soared,’ says Stitch & Story co-founder Jennifer Lam. Together with business partner and co-founder Jen Hoang, combining their backgrounds in design and publishing, the pair set out to create a modern online craft brand for a new generation of makers. Aimed at novice crafters learning to knit or crochet, their all-in-one kits contain everything you need to get started and learn the basic techniques.

Stitch & Story knitting kits, prices vary

Let’s Craft

Want to help bring joy and creativity into the homes of children across the country? Crafting should be accessible to everyone, and that’s why we’re inviting you to help the Crafts Council get activity packs to kids through the Let’s Craft appeal. These packs are aimed at the primary and secondary school-aged children most in need of support, such as those who are eligible for free school meals. Distributed by a network of community hubs and food banks, each pack contains art supplies such as pens, pencils, paper, crayons and a scrapbook, as well as an activity book designed by Andria Zafirakou, art teacher and winner of the 2018 Global Teacher Prize. A £10 donation pays for one Let’s Craft pack – and you can help us buy one or as many packs as you wish.

To donate £10 text CRAFT to 70085 or donate online