MakerSpace: YouTube Channels to Help Get Your Creative Juices Flowing

Like most of our teens, I now have a go to repertoire of YouTube channels that help me get creative ideas for teen programming or makespace ideas. Today, I’m sharing with you some of my favorites. If you have some additional favorites, please share them with me in the comments.
I actually know about this channel because The Tween is obsessed with it. It has a lot of great craft ideas and hacks. The hot glue gun video you see below has inspired many craft ideas for us both. Of all the channels I have seen, this has the most accessible crafts for those of us looking for projects, tips, tricks and hacks that can be used in library programming. I highly recommend it.
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Not at the same level as 5 Minute Crafts, but it does have a few gems.
A lot of these hacks are more elevated and require more sophisticated and dangerous tools. But you can never go wrong with a make the perfect slime video.
I love basically everything produced by Make. Their books are staples when you consider makerspaces. They are, however, more complex in the tools that they use and the amount of time projects take.
The title is pretty self explanatory. DIY is a great search term when looking for YouTube channels to follow regarding crafting and making.
Here’s another channel that offers some fun, simple DIY tutorials for tweens and teens.
There are some other individual crafters to know about as well. Moriah Elizabeth leads you through squishee makeovers (this is another Thing 2 favorite). Karina Garcia is a slime expert that even has her own slime craft kits that you can buy in places like Target. Tasty is the go to place for food related program ideas. And there are several other channels listed here.
If you search things like DIY craft tutorials YouTube, you will find a lot of best of lists to explore. There are YouTube channels dedicated to paint pouring (a very popular activity right now), drawing, making vinyl t-shirts and more. The Teen watches a variety of cookie decorating and nail tutorial videos as well. All of these are great sources of inspiration for program ideas. I will also admit that I find a lot of tweens and teens watch various YouTube channels as stress relievers. The Acrylic Pouring channel can be mesmerizing and stress relieving. Happy watching!
Filed under: Teen Programming

About Karen Jensen, MLS
Karen Jensen has been a Teen Services Librarian for almost 30 years. She created TLT in 2011 and is the co-editor of The Whole Library Handbook: Teen Services with Heather Booth (ALA Editions, 2014).
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