Ideas for my 12 year old, please.

[seeker]

My 12 year old loves making, and always has a couple of projects on the go. She earns pocket money making cards, and loves scapbooking and is just generally a "crafter"!. However, she leads a very busy life and often doesn't have much time to spare. What I would like is ideas for things that we can do together in the odd half hour that we could finish. Not too hard, because she's tired, but not too babyish. An example, she got a kit at Christmas for making little beaded charms and last night we started and finished a lovely little bead octopus that she clipped on her phone and went happily off to school with this morning. It took about 35 minutes from start to finish.

Any other ideas? Either kits or from stuff I probably have in my huge stash?

Top of my head:-
Bag charms, book marks, covered notebooks, Teach her to knit and she could soon do little scarves, patchwork (little bits at a time soon add up - she could use old clothes/bags etc so it's a personal keepsake). Loads of these make nice little pressies for her friends too.
Shall keep thinking.

She can knit - that's one of her long term projects! Patchwork's a good idea. And covered notebooks - we could probably do one in half an hour or so. Thank you!

And we could make book marks out of ribbons with little Fimo animals and things on the ends. Oh - want to do one now!

You can also do bookmarks with odds of paper from cardmaking and laminate them. Punch a hole in the end and add some beads etc.

Thank you - bought some shopping list notebooks yesterday - 3 for 50p! - and we're going to cover them for the grandmas this weekend. Any more ideas?

Do you have younger children? she could make clothes for their dolls?

customise any old clothes that are wearing out/too short etc for herself?

my daughter is 13 and she makes jewellery - earrings can be made really quickly and bracelets and necklaces not much longer - she will need a pair of rosary/round nose pliers some wire cutters and findings - for beads carboots and charity shops are good and there are some lovely beadshops on ebay too. HTH.

I agree about making jewellery - it can be as simple or as complex as she wants it to be. My DD makes a lot of presents for her friends who love being able to choose the colours etc. and having a customised piece to match a favourite outfit or whatever.

If she enjoys working with beads she could then move on to decorating cheap t-shirts and jeans following whatever are the latest fashion trends.

Learning to crochet is very useful for all sorts of craft items.

There are lots of ideas on www.craftbits.com and www.hobbycraft.co.uk/