say no to plastic!

Here's a simple and excellent habit to get into. Carry a foldable cloth bag with you so wherever you go, so that when you next buy something, or go food shopping, and they try to foist a plastic bag on you, you can say no!

Cloth bags can be found on sale all over the place, or why not make your own? Go to this fantastic site for information on sociable guerilla bagging. It even includes a pattern and simple instructions for making your own. And never fear, the bag IS strong enough to hold your shopping. The bags made from this pattern have been tested on bottles of wine.

As for me, a very good friend gave me this lovely bag which not only saves the earth or innocent sea animals from choking on plastic, but draws compliments from all who see it....

nothing new here

Yes, I'm afraid there isn't anything new here. After looking into crafty projects I could undertake using recycled materials, I realised it would be harder than I thought, mainly because:

1) many projects require one to have collected a large quantity of a specific type of material (eg. tin cans, or bottle tops, or stamps, or brown envelopes or white envelopes etc) persistently and diligently, over a long period of time before one can make something impressive with said material

2) many projects require a skill which I don't have and currently don't have the time to learn, for example, carpentry, knitting, sewing, metal working, welding, etc.

3) following on from above, these specific skills also require certain equipment which I don't have, nor the space to put them even if I happened to acquire them somehow by accident.

I'm sorry if this sounds like an excuse, but just look at some of the recycled art and craft projects there are out there and you'll see what I mean. The best I could do is papier mache with old newspapers, but we don't even buy newspapers anymore (read them online), so we'd be buying newspapers just so I could make papier mache creations out of them. Not really recycling, eh? So for the time being, there won't be any new projects on this blog. Sorry.

Sweet filters

You know those cellophane sweet wrappers that come off chocolates like those from a Quality Street box of goodies? Well, don't throw them away! They come in all kinds of colours and you can use them as impromptu camera lens filters. Granted, you have to hold them in front of the lens but hey, it's free and you don't add more plastic to a landfill site!

Here's an example. Dreamy effect, don't you think? No photoshop required!

Bottle Bulletin Board

I don't have a bulletin board above my desk at home, and my wall is stuck with pictures and postcards, but sometimes, I need somewhere visible to remind me of things I need to do. Based on this need and the abundance of plastic water bottles and cardboard at home, I created this today. It's a portable bottle bulletin board. Yes, you can buy fancy things like this called memo holders in stores, they usually come with a plastic base and a wire sticking out of it with an alligator clip attached to the end. My own homemade one isn't as fancy, but it didn't cost me anything, it uses things I had lying around and would have languished on my shelf or in a landfill otherwise, and it serves its purpose!

I used a plastic water bottle, cardboard, bits of leftover old wrapping paper, a page out of an old Saturday Guardian magazine, paperclips and cellotape to make this. So there you go. You could probably make a much prettier one, go on, have a go.

what's it all about?

A discussion with a friend inspired me to have a go at making things out of recycled materials to:

1) have fun creating things
2) raise awareness about the things we can do to help the environment
3) help the environment

Let's see how it goes...