• Use colorful clothespins for craft projects.clothespin image by cleomiu from Fotolia.com
  
  Clothespins come in both wood and colorful plastic. Use colorful plastic clothespins to create several crafts to decorate your home or just spend a rainy day having fun with your child. Colored clothespins are inexpensive and can be found at craft stores and department stores.
  
  

Color Matching Game

• Make a fun game, like the one suggested at chasingcheerios.blogspot.com, with colored clothespins that will help a young child with dexterity and to learn her colors. Take a solid-colored bowl large enough to hold one of every color clothespin. Take color dot stickers and stick one of each color matching each color of clothes pin around the rim of the bowl. Have a young child take the clothespins from inside the bowl and clamp them around the rim of the bowl on the matching color dot.
  
  

Clothespin Fairies

• Create a magical clothespin fairy, as recommended by Crayola. Fold a white sheet of printer paper in half vertically. Starting at the folded edge, cut a shape like a butterfly wing. Unfold the set of wings and decorate them with crayons, colored pencils or markers. Cut a pipe cleaner in half. Cut one-third off of another pipe cleaner. Pinch the pipe cleaners in the clothespin, down close to the hinge. Fold the shorter pipe cleaner's ends up to make the arms and the longer pipe cleaners ends down for legs. Pinch the wings in the clothespin right about the pipe cleaners. Glue strands of ribbon or a feather at the closed end of the pipe cleaner to give your fairy hair. Glue craft eyes on the clothespin. Add other decorations to your clothespin fairy, such as feathers for a tutu and a small, silk flower in place of a shirt.
  
  

Rainbow Mirror Frame

• Take a mirror with a thin, wooden frame and clip clothespins all around the frame in rainbow order--red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. Use the rainbow-framed mirror to dress up a kid's room or colorful bathroom.
  
  

Coffee Filter Butterfly Mobile

• Make mini-coffee filter butterflies as suggested at makingfriends.com. Color a coffee filter with washable markers. Spray the colored coffee filter with water from a spray bottle so that the colors blend together. Pinch the coffee filter together in the middle to form wings. Pinch the coffee filter in a clothespin in a coordinating color. Make several of these butterflies. Hot glue one end of a strip of ribbon to the top of each clothespin butterfly. Use hot glue to form a cross with two wooden dowels. Tie the other ends of the ribbon onto the wooden dowels. Use fishing line and an eye screw to hand the mobile from the ceiling.