Smart Gadgets to Upcycle Your Empty Plastic Drink Bottles
DIY Apple Picker
The hard truth is, in the real world, every so often you just end up having to buy some beverage that comes in a plastic bottle. Big family-sized pop bottles…
How to Make Pop Bottle Flowers
Have you seen those fantasy faux-glass flowers made from recycled pop bottles? I mean the delicate fragile-looking twisty looking ones, like those the US-based artist Laura Astor) used to make.…
6 Easy Bags to Sew or Crochet from Recycled T-Shirts
Want to keep the summer memories alive, but your fav souvenir T-shirt is past its “best before” date? With just a few basic sewing or crochet skills, you can “upcycle” that tee into a cool new purse or handbag, grocery bag, big soft tote… the possibilities are endless… (more…)
Recycled Blue Jeans Quilt
Think about all you've been through together, those great-fitting friendly old jeans and you. Who wants to just trash those favourite jeans, when they get beyond wearing? Check out these recycled-denim quilt pattern and tutorials for cool ideas... [read more]
Virginia Fleck Mandala Art
Our evironmentalist blogger with an eye for beauty, Pelf Nyok, has dropped by to introduce her latest find -- an American artist who creates huge mandala wall pieces with other…
Make a Perpetual Calendar from a Cookie Sheet
You know how sometimes you just get a mad urge to make something?
Every time I go near a craft store (or even a dollar store, for that matter), the sheer variety of bits and bobs, papers and stamps and scrapbooking stamps, papers, stickers and other embellishments — it’s almost overwhelming!
My fingers just itch to play with them, to make something new and useful.
Not to mention all the craft supplies I’ve got stashed away, like those papier mache beads from the 1970s, those Mexican milagros, scraps of leather and felt and lace, vintage buttons…
Here’s one project I’ve had my eye on, but didn’t quite get to in time to start off the new year — a new way to upcycle an old metal cookie sheet that’s otherwise just headed for the garbage:
Recycled Lightbulb Snowman Ornament
This chubby little "Pretty in Pink Princess" is one of a whole family of ultra-cute snowmen and snow girls made by painting and embellishing a recycled lightbulb. Hat and scarf…