Amy Sedaris grew up making crafts, but that doesn't mean she has to like them.
"I hate crafts," Sedaris said with an upbeat grin as she kicked off a book tour to promote "Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People," the tongue-in-cheek guide she wrote with collaborator Paul Dinello.
With her trademark humor, Sedaris roasts the 1970s-era earnestness often associated with crafting, with chapters such as "Crafting for Jesus" and "Teenagers Have a Lot of Pain." But she also offers plenty of inventive ideas, and conveys warmth and knowledge about her subject.
Sedaris grew up making crafts in North Carolina with her family, including her brother, the humor writer David Sedaris.
"At Christmas, we would make all of our ornaments out of papier-mache and Styrofoam balls and things like that," she said. She continued to craft throughout her teens as a Girl Scout and member of Junior Achievement, selling handmade items door to door.
"My whole life is about making stuff," Sedaris said. "I still have that attitude. I just like the transaction."
Still, after a year of incessant crafting for the book, the only project she still can stand is weaving simple pot holders out of cotton loops.
"I make those when I'm on an airplane or when I'm watching TV because it prevents me from biting my fingernails," she said. "I sell them when I'm traveling. "
Sedaris, a TV and movie actress perhaps best known for her Comedy Central series "Strangers with Candy," is also a baker who has sold homemade cupcakes and cheese balls out of bakeries and coffee shops in New York. (She now makes them rarely, upon request.)
The idea for a crafting book grew out of her previous book, "I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence," a humorous guide to entertaining, published in 2006. It ended with "a crafts section, and I didn't have much room for it," she said. "So I had in the back of my head that maybe one day I'll do a crafts book."
Sedaris spent a year coming up with quirky chapter themes, such as crafts for people with various handicaps ("Handicraftible"); those with anger issues, for instance, are encouraged to distress a wooden box with a pair of scissors, "randomly stabbing it like you would a lover who has spurned you."
A section on nature crafts offers instructions on making a worm composting bin, and a fire ornament made with toilet paper rolls and tissue paper, as well as nature-inspired recipes for mint juleps and stuffed mushrooms.
Other mischievous projects include a budget tool rack made from a board, nails and strips of rubber, from a chapter on crafts that can be done by the poor. "Being poor is a wonderful motivation to be creative," she writes.
After the chapters were decided on, Sedaris transformed her apartment in New York's West Village into a workshop for hundreds of projects.
"The production started in like January and it ran to maybe May," she said. "We worked every day making crafts, shooting them, making the costumes."
Collaborators included comedian Stephen Colbert, who showed how to make a pin out of pieces of broken china found on a beach, and designer Todd Oldham, who made a tinfoil bracelet — one of Sedaris' favorite pieces in the book. A section on "out of this world" crafts was inspired by Neil Patrick Harris, a magic aficionado and Sedaris' co-star in an upcoming movie, "The Best and the Brightest." It includes an alien mask made out of a pasta box, and stars made with marshmallows and toothpicks covered with glitter.
Sedaris, who has a chameleonic ability to channel different characters, said the best part of making "Simple Times" was transforming herself into the different characters who accompany each section. She appears in Native American garb, for instance, with a bow and arrow made out of paint brushes in the section on nature crafts. And she dresses as Jesus, with a beard and mustache, in the section on Bible crafts.
"I'm a big costume person, so that was the most fun," she said.
Despite the book's irreverence, Sedaris hopes it inspires readers to remember the crafts they once loved.
"The whole point of the book is that if you have a hobby, or had a hobby, get back to it," she said. "If you have the energy and you want to do something, just do it."