Howcast
The best source for fun, free, and useful how-to videos and guides.
Aspiring animator? Learn a few fun animation techniques with these videos.
All you need are a few apples and some basic arts and crafts tools to tackle the fun and easy projects in this apple crafts video series from Howcast.
Learn circular knitting — also known as knitting in the round — from expert Jessica Kaufman in these Howcast videos.
Kids driving you crazy? Settle them down with the fun and easy art projects in this craft ideas for kids video series from Howcast.
Already know how to knit? Learn how to crochet with the crocheting lessons in this Howcast video series.
Learn how to use a digital camera and pick up some digital photography tips and techniques with these Howcast videos.
Take a crash course in digital photography from commercial photographer Dan Bracaglia with these Howcast videos.
Got a roll of duct tape? Then you’ve got hours of arts and crafts fun ahead of you with the duct tape crafts in this Howcast video series.
Get ready to celebrate Easter with this Howcast video series on how to decorate Easter eggs, make bunny ears, and pull together other Easter crafts.
All you need is a needle, thread, some fabric, and these step by step instructions to start sewing.
Increase your flower power with the easy flower crafts in this Howcast video series.
Learn about glassblowing from pros Todd Hansen and Ed Donovan in these Howcast videos.
Into arts and crafts? Check out the great craft ideas in this Howcast video series.
Makeup artist Kenneth Llambelis helps you create classic Halloween characters with the step-by-step instructions in these Howcast makeup tutorials.
Make sure Dad has a very happy Father’s Day with the ideas in this Howcast video series.
Make floral arrangements that rival those of a professional florist with help from this Howcast video series on flower arranging.
Pick up tips about how to become a professional artist in these Howcast videos.
Learn how to crochet with these Howcast tutorials featuring Andrea Lemire of Lion Brand Yarn Studio.
Learn how to paint a picture or design on someone’s face with the step-by-step instructions in these Howcast videos.
Pick up some great graffiti tips, tricks, and techniques from master tagger Paes 164 in these Howcast videos.
Check out the no-sew ways to make a blanket, scarf, tutu and more from crafty Jennifer Wiese in these Howcast videos.
Master the ancient art of Japanese paper folding with the step-by-step instructions in these tutorials.
Learn how to make fake cuts, blood, and other gore from special effects makeup artist Ciara Rose Griffin in these Howcast videos.
Learn how to do stop motion animation courtesy of Joe Vena of NYC’s Children’s Museum of the Arts in these Howcast videos.
Learn how to draw dogs, cats, leaves, flowers, fruit, grass, people, water, and much more from artist Rebecca Schweiger in these Howcast videos.
Learn how to sketch and illustrate with these video tutorials, which will have you drawing celebrities like Katy Perry and Justin Bieber in no time.
From figures and croquis to specs and clothing, learn to draw fashion sketches from fashion designer Garo Sparo in these Howcast videos.
Learn how to draw with the drawing lessons in this Howcast video series.
Budding graffiti artists and experienced taggers alike can learn something about how to tag from master tagger Paes 164 in these Howcast videos.
Learn how to draw manga with the step-by-step instructions from artist Chris Hart in these Howcast art tutorials.
Learn how to do all kinds of knitting stitches with the step-by-step instructions in these knitting tutorials from Howcast.
Learn how to make balloon animals from magician Jonas Cain in these Howcast videos.
Learn how to make friendship bracelets from The Lanyard Ladies in these Howcast videos.
Put together a great Halloween costume with the ideas in this Howcast video series.
Whether you want to scare trick-or-treaters or entertain them, there’s an idea for you in this frightfully good video series.
Learn how to make jewelry from custom jeweler and sculptor Courtney Gray in these Howcast videos.
Learn how to make children’s musical instruments out of stuff you have around the house from the founders of Music Moves Me in these Howcast videos.
Learn how to make origami with these tutorials, which show you how to make an easy origami rose, star, heart, bird, frog, butterfly, and much more.
Learn how to make homemade pop-up cards and crafts with the step-by-step instructions in these Howcast videos.
Learn how to make Rainbow Loom bracelets from The Lanyard Ladies in these Howcast videos.
Making your own soap is inexpensive, easy-to-do, and can be the perfect DIY gift for friends and family.
Let acrylic painting teacher Linda Rhea show you how to paint foliage, landscapes, seascapes, and much more in these Howcast videos.
Learn how to scrapbook with the ideas and techniques demonstrated by expert Carla Sylvester in these scrapbooking tutorials from Howcast.
Learn how to sew from expert seamstress Cynthia Mann in these Howcast videos.
Learn how to take better pictures with these Howcast photography tutorials featuring professional photographer Luke Ballard.
Learn how to take great portraits from professional photographer Joe Sinnott in these Howcast videos.
Learn how to tie dye with the tips, tricks, and techniques demonstrated in these Howcast videos.
Learn how to tie knots with the classic knot tying techniques demonstrated in these Howcast videos.
Do you like velvet Elvis paintings and don’t get abstract art? Then you need this Howcast video series on art appreciation.
Learn how to sew using a sewing machine from designer Jennifer Wiese in these Howcast videos.
Learn how to gift wrap a present like a pro with the tutorials in this Howcast video series.
Grab your needles and yarn and get ready to knit baby gifts, blankets, hats, scarves, and more.
Bring out your inner artist with these painting tips and techniques.
Learn how to make your own jewelry with the jewelry-making techniques demonstrated in these Howcast videos.
For film aficionados and cinema enthusiasts alike.
Transform boring sheets of paper into simple and fun craft projects.
Capture your subject in the best light with these photography tips that cover everything from nature and still-life photography to fashion photography.
Once you get the hang of quilting with these videos, you’ll never buy another blanket again.
Scrapbooking is a fun hobby anyone can get into, even if you don’t consider yourself particularly crafty. So grab some photos and card stock and prepare to scrap!
Learn how to thread a needle more easily and other neat tricks with these Howcast videos.
Learn studio photography tips and tricks from professional photographer Chris Ryan in these Howcast videos.
Transcript Sometimes you’re working on a scrapbook page, and you just need a circle. And so, let’s see how to do that. Well, you could do it the old-fashioned way. You could trace a circle, and these are three that I traced last night using different jar lids. You could trace a plate and then …
Transcript Die-cuts on your scrapbook page are very similar to stickers, except that they don’t have adhesive on the back. So you can treat them like a sticker or not. I have here an assortment of die-cuts and a die-cut, some are just plain shapes, but a lot of them now have printing on them. …
Transcript One of the really fun things about scrapbooking is playing with stickers, and I think those of us who’ve been scrapbooking for a while love to collect stickers. I’ve got just a few different kinds over here. We have alphabet stickers, stickers that can be a title, stickers that are flat, stickers that are …
Transcript Scrapbooks aren’t necessarily all about photos, a lot of times you’ll want to include memorabilia into your scrapbooks. All those little pieces of life that you collect that have meaning, that help you tell the story. So here I want to tell you a little about the kinds of memorabilia that you can include …
Transcript One of the key elements of your scrapbook page is, of course, your title. The title tells the viewer right away what this page is about, and so there are lots and lots of different ways to create your title for your page, and I have just a few examples here. Probably the absolute …
Transcript When you’re designing a scrapbook page, one of the decisions you have to make is what colors am I going to use on my page? Well, one way to do that is just to look at a paper pad and say, oh, I love these pretty colors. I’m going to use this on my …
Transcript Sometimes when you’re cutting pages or photos for scrapbooking, you’ll find that your paper trimmer just isn’t enough and your scissors just aren’t enough. What you need is a craft knife, otherwise known as an X-Acto knife, a crafts knife, whatever. Craft knife, when you’re cutting with it, you’re always going to want to …
Transcript When you’re designing your scrapbook pages, very often you’ll want to have a photo really pop off the page, and one great way to do that is by matting the photo. And, matting the photo, also, makes it more important. So, when you have your page, you want to have a focal point. You …
Transcript When you’re creating your scrapbook pages very often you’ll find that you have a photo that would be great if it was just that one person not in the picture, and I’m not talking about your great aunt Emily in the third row of the family portrait. I’m talking about something like this photo …
Transcript Most of us who scrapbook or do any kind of paper crafting can’t live without our paper trimmers. I have two different types here to show you. They work in a very similar way, but they’re a little different, so that’s why I wanted you to see a couple of different types. This one …
Transcript Trying to design your first scrapbook layout can be kind of intimidating, what do you do, where does the picture go, what else do I need on my page. One of the easiest ways to get started with designing a scrapbook page is to use a sketch or a page map and you can …
Transcript When you’re scrapbooking, adhesives are really important because that’s what holds the whole project together. So I have an assortment of adhesives here and I want to show you just a few. Over here we have an assortment of wet adhesives, or glues. glossy accents and other products such as diamond glaze can be …
Transcript When you are just starting to scrapbook, there are just a few essential tools you really need, and these are my personal preferences. But I think almost everybody would agree you need some paper, you would like to have a paper trimmer, although some people do prefer to use a craft knife. A ruler, …
Transcript A lot of us who are starting to scrapbook are trying to decide whether we need all these products that say ‘acid free’ and so on. It really depends on what your purpose is in scrapbooking. If you’re creating a scrapbook that you want to hand on to your children, and your grandchildren, and …
Transcript Hi I’m Carla and we’re talking about scrap booking. One of the first decisions you need to make when you start scrap booking is what kind of scrapbook you want to use. So I have several different types of scrap books here. One of the more traditional types is a post bound album. So …
Transcript Hi, my name is Joe Vena. I’m the creative director of the Children’s Museum of the Arts Media Lab and I’ve been with the museum for almost ten years now. I teach stop motion animation and clay sculpture at our clay bar and I love it. Something I love about teaching stop motion animation …
Transcript How do you animate clouds? This is a good question, and there are various answers to it, depending on the direction you want to go as an artist. I prefer animating clouds with cotton. So I’ll take cotton batting either from the inside of a stuffed animal or from a bag of cotton. You …
Transcript So we’re going to animate a flying bird. As with so much in the stop motion realm, there are different approaches we can take. We’re going to animate our flying bird with a paper cutout style, using our multi-plane to give us two layers, a layer for our sky and the layer for our …
Transcript So it’s fun to pick living creatures and animate those, and we’re going to try out a little animating of some swimming fish. There are, as with so many elements of stop motion animation, there are many ways to approach and attack animating swimming fish. We are going to use actual fish pictures in …
Transcript A fantastic thing to practice animating are explosions. Explosions are, of course, can be very serious things, but in the case of animating, we can enjoy them, have a little fun. This is going to be a very, very lighthearted explosion. It will be a candy explosion. I have a piece of hard candy …
Transcript When you’re creating a stop-motion animation, it’s fund to give yourself challenges. One particular challenge I really enjoy is the animation of fire. This is something you can do in many, many different ways. We’re going to find one fire trick right now. I am going to share it with you. We have our …
Transcript So we have a fully realized, nearly fully realized, armature here. We’ve got some workable hands. We’ve given a tail to this armature as well. I think the next step would be adding a head. We’ll make this a basic sort of a cat-inspired creature, so we’re going to make a cat head for …
Transcript So you have a wonderful puppet ready to go here. Perhaps you would like to add some details. A really wonderful, sometimes challenging, detail to give your puppet would be hands so that the puppet can grip things, pick them up, raise up a finger with an idea, give a thumbs up, etc. I …
Transcript So, how do you make a good, sturdy puppet for animation? There are a number of ways that you could create a puppet for your animation. I like to start with a wire armature and build from that wire armature. So, I take some aluminum wire, kind of a thinner gauge like this. And …
Transcript So when you’re approaching a more complicated puppet and how to animate that puppet, a few good things to keep in mind is that your puppet’s feet are nice and flat there and they’re sturdy. They’re holding your puppet up. In some cases, animators would drill the feet into the floor for each step. …
Transcript So when you’re creating a stop motion animation, it’s good to go in with a plan. Sometimes executing something very simple like making an item grow or shrink can be a lot of fun. In this case, we are going to use clay to make some shapes shrink and then possibly grow again in …
Transcript We have our clay face. We are going to animate the clay face to blink. And what we do to make the character blink is take some clay. It can be the same color as the clay you’re already using or a different color. We’re using the same color here. And I create a …
Transcript We’ve created a clay face to make a stop-motion animated film with. We’re going to bring this face to life right now. We have our face all set up here, ready to go. He’s made of clay. His eye brows and his mustache are also made of clay. The only thing not-clay here are …
Transcript So a really great stop motion animation exercise is to create a face and animate that face. And we create that face out of clay. We’ll start with a larger piece and an extra piece of clay here. I’m going to sculpt the face out of this clay, and I’ll save this piece for …
Transcript Once you’ve created your clay character, perhaps you’d like to make a place for the character to animate in. Dressing your set in an animation is important, of course, and there are many directions you can go in. We’re going to be working with a camera directly in front of us, shooting against this …
Transcript So if you’d like to make a clay character or a clay puppet to be animated, there area few great tips I can give you. First, get some clay. The clay that you animate with is really up to you. There are a variety of modeling clays on the market. You’re probably looking for …
Transcript So you can create stop motion animated films with so many different types of materials. I think one of the most effective materials to use, of course, would be clay. And clay is a great great material for stop motion animation because it’s so easy to change the form of clay. When animating with …
Transcript So it’s good to know that when you’re animating found objects, you can animate with almost any object you can find though some objects work better than others. For example, animating with a block may prove easier than animating with a ball because the block will stay where you put it whereas the ball …
Transcript One of my favorite ways to create stop motion animation is through using a multiplane. And what a multiplane allows you to do is add a layer to your film, add a layer to your animation. And you can build multiplanes that will give you numerous layers. In this case of this multiplane here, …
Transcript So you don’t always have to make a plan when you’re creating a stop motion animation, but it’s a pretty good idea to go in with a plan. And one way to plan is by creating a storyboard. Many film directors use storyboards, and they use different styles of storyboards. what a storyboard basically …
Transcript So, if you would like to set up your own stop motion animation studio, there are many different directions you can go in. Here’s one of them. I have a digital video camera, fairly compact model, rigged up to a C-stand by a clamp right here and it’s pointing down to the surface right …
Transcript What is stop motion animation? Stop motion animation is basically when you take a photograph of something and you change that subject you’re photographing in a very small way and you take another picture and you change it and you take another picture and you manually change it. Take another picture and you change …
Transcript How to animate water is a great question, and there are so many different ways to animate water in stop motion animation. One way that I like to do it is with clear hair gel. Now this can get a little bit messy, of course. Keep this in mind if you’re trying it. But …
Transcript So let’s explore some easy projects for a first time circular knitter. You’ve already got a lot of options ahead of you because when you knit circularly you don’t have to seam anything, you don’t have any wrong sides to worry about, so it’s actually easier to start circular knitting than it is to …
Transcript I’m going to show you a trick for making jogless stripes in the round. Now, what a jog is, is when you finish one round and you start the next round and if there is a color change between those two rounds, it’s really obvious that the colors don’t line up. So what you …
Transcript If you would like to do small diameter circular knitting, you have a couple options. The two circular needle method is great for making tiny diameter things. You could get as small as you wanted to with down to just like two stitches on this side and two stitches on that side with two …
Transcript I’m going to talk to you a little bit about large diameter circular knitting. When you use a really, really long needle like this one, you use it in exactly the same way as you would a shorter circular needle. So you’re going to be knitting around and around and around with the tail …
Transcript I’m going to show you how to prevent and fix circular knitting inside out. Now, there are times when you would want to knit inside out for circular knitting, mainly when you have to do a lot of reverse stockinette which means from the outside you would need to pearl every single round. Not …
Transcript I’m going to show you how to prevent ladders in your circular knitting. You don’t have to worry about ladders showing up when you’re knitting on a short circular needle because there’s no break between the needle points. However, when you’re knitting circularly where you divide the number of stitches over either either side …
Transcript Now I’m going to show you how to fix some mistakes in circular knitting. These tricks also work for knitting flat with straight needles. So what I’ve got here is I’ve put in some accidental purls here in my c of stockenette [?]. So I’m going to show you a couple different methods of …
Transcript I’m now going to show you how to prevent a twist when you join to knit in the round. So I’ve just cast on all my stitches. And the easiest way for me to make sure there’s no twists is to align all my little cast on, my ridge here, in the inside of …
Transcript I’m going to talk to you now about how to knit a circular gauge swatch for your circular knitting project. So when you knit a gauge swatch flat, you knit the front and then you knit the back in the pattern that you want to take your gauge measurement in. So for the most …
Transcript I’m going to show you know how to fix stitches that are too tight. This tip is good for circular knitting as well as knitting on straight needles, but it’s especially important to not have tight stitches in circular knitting, because of this part of the needle here, this is called the ” Join,” …
Transcript Let’s say you did your best to cast on and join to knit in the round without getting a twist, but you knit the first couple of rounds and you discover there is a twist. It happens to the best of us, not to worry. You can fix it without needing to go back …
Transcript I’ll show you now how to count rows on your circular knitting project. If you’re just knitting for a long length, like if you’re doing a sleeve and you don’t need to keep track of row number this, row number that, you can just knit and measure with your measuring tape when you think …
Transcript So now I’ll show you how to keep track of your beginning of your round when you’re knitting circularly. It’s pretty easy to keep track of the beginning of your row when you’re knitting flat because you’re back at the beginning of your row of stitches again and at you’re at the end of …
Transcript So now I’m going to show you how to increase when you’re knitting in the round. There’s really nothing different about increasing in the round as opposed to when you’re increasing flat. You just have to figure out what kind of increases you want and where you want to put them. So if this …
Transcript So, I’m going to show you how to work decreases on a circular needle. The thing to remember is that there is no edge. Right? Because if we’re knitting in the round, there’s no right edge or left edge to have to balance decreases on. But there are a few different ways of doing …
Transcript Now I’ll show you how to knit in the round if you are a continental knitter or a left-handed knitter. Now this has nothing to do with your actual handedness. You can write with a pen or a pencil with your right hand and be a left-handed knitter or you can be a left-hander …
Transcript Now I’m going to show you how to join to knit in the round using the two circular needle method. Just like before, I’ve cast all my stitches on to one circular needle. This is my most recent stitch that I’ve just made. This is stitch number one. What I’m going to do is …
Transcript Now I’m going to show you how to join knit in the round using the magic loop method. Just like the other ones, you want to cast all your cast on stitches on to one side of the needle. This is going to be a magic loop, obviously. I’ve got my long 40 inch …
Transcript So now I’m going to show you how to join to knit in the round. This is so easy and so fun, and it’s what takes you from knitting flat to knitting circularly. So now I’m going to show you how to join the knit in the round on a short circular needle. So …
Transcript So, with double-pointed needles, it’s a little less straightforward. You’re going to go ahead and cast on your key number of stitches onto one circular needle. So, for this, I’ve cast on 30, because that’s really, really easy to distribute on three needles. So, all 30 are here, and then this is the last …
Transcript I’m going to explain to you how best to distribute your stitches when you’re working in the round on DPNs-double pointed needles. You don’t have to worry about that when you’re knitting on a short circular because all of those stitches are together on the same cable. When you’re using magic loop or two …
Transcript So I’m going to tell you how to avoid a jog when changing colors in circular knitting. I’ll just show you what a jog looks like and explain to you why we get them. So if you look up close here right this row this is the end of the round in my headband …
Transcript When we are knitting circularly, we are actually knitting kind of like a helix. We’re spiraling up and up and up. So if you think about a sheet of paper. If you are knitting flat, you would be working up in rows like lined notebook paper. You would do one line and then the …
Transcript So this is a really, really cool tool, a great trick to know, for people who like to knit in the round. There are so many benefits to knitting garments in the round. Like if you are knitting a sweater, you can do it all in one piece. You don’t have to do a …
Transcript Right. I’m going to show you how to add a color to your circular knitting project. This is one of my favorite things to do because I love to knit stranded color work. I’m going to be showing you how to add a color to this headband, which is a pattern that I have …
Transcript So I’m going to show you how to read knitting charts for circular knitting. If you already know how to read charts in flat knitting, then this will be no problem to adjust, but I’ll also explain this for new chart readers so that you can get an idea of what it is to …
