6 Forgotten ‘80s Crafts We Still Miss

The 1980s were packed with fun crafts to keep kids busy.

Sometimes they were camp crafts that you would make after swimming in a lake or a project you would pick up in the summer to stay busy before smartphones. There were also options for fun things you could make for yourself or make for your friends. But no matter the reason, they were always fun.

Then life got in the way and we had to grow up and go to work instead of making friendship bracelets over summer break. But do you remember these crafts that kept you busy over breaks and allowed you to show off your creativity? And would you still remember how to make these nostalgic favorites from the ‘80s today?

1. Friendship Bracelets
2. Plastic Lace Lanyards
3. Beaded Safety Pins
4. Paper Fortune Tellers
5. Shrinky Dinks
6. School Book Crappers

Friendship Bracelets

Friendship bracelets were a fun and cheap craft to make using only inexpensive embroidery floss and a safety pin or tape to keep it anchored. The trick to the bracelets was an easy knotting technique that could create basic designs like stripes or staircase-looking twists, or you could learn more intricate designs that could include zig zags and even beads.

Most bracelets also required only a few knots to attach it around your wrist, but that meant the only way to get them off was to cut them or wait until the floss wore out and broke. Of course, people still make friendship bracelets today, but the style has evolved over the years.

Plastic Lace Lanyards

Camp wouldn't be complete without coming home with crafts you made, and usually a plastic lace lanyard was part of your camp crafting glory. The lanyards, which were sometimes called boondoggles, were made using different weaving techniques with plastic lace. And while it could be hard to get a lanyard started, it was satisfying to get a lanyard going with your weaving to make one long enough for a keychain or to attach to a bag or backpack.

Beaded Safety Pins

Beaded safety pins were such an easy ‘80s craft that you only needed two things: beads and safety pins, just like it says in the name. All crafters needed to do was slide a few beads on the end of the safety pin and close it up, and you were done. Bigger safety pins or adding additional pins to a design made it fun to experiment with different designs to pin on your jean jacket while basic pins were perfect to attach to your shoelaces to personalize your shoes.

Paper Fortune Tellers

You may not have a name for it or know what it's called, but you sure to know a paper fortune teller when you see it. The folded paper could usually be found on elementary school playgrounds with numbers on one set of the interior paper tellers with flaps covering up different options for your "fortune" like what kind of job you could have to more basic responses similar to a Magic 8 Ball. The paper fortune tellers were so popular that they even made it into the opening credits for the television show Community.

Shrinky Dinks

Shrinky dinks started out as a piece of plastic with large images on it that you could color with markers before you had an adult stick them in the oven—and that's when the magic happened. The plastic would shrink in the heat of the oven, coming out smaller and hard enough to use for plenty of other crafts.

You could add them to the end of a keyring for a keychain or use them for charms for a necklace or bracelet. And if you want to relive the shrinky dink nostalgia, you can still buy kits online to enjoy a ‘80s craft.

School Book Crappers

Back in the ‘80s, computers at schools were tucked away in a computer room for special use while most learning was done with textbooks. But books took a beating during the school year, so students had to get creative by covering their books with special paper wrappers to protect them, including ones with graphics or even giveaway book covers from fast-food chains.

But the best covers were usually ones made out of brown paper bags that ‘80s crafters would love to show off their artistic skills on with drawings and designs. And yes, even drawing that cool “S” doodle all over your book cover could be considered an artistic craft.