Green Options » Lenore MacLeod-Bickley

Eco-Friendly Stains and Paints to Revive Old Furniture

Lenore MacLeod-Bickley — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 16:57:52 +0000

Throughout the years, my husband and I have inherited some interesting pieces of furnture. None of them would be considered antiques, and some are just hand-me-downs that we took without really knowing why. Two of these pieces of furntire were in our art/guest room, and every time we looked at them we wondered what we could do to make them more appealing. We realized that the answer was to sand them down and stain them, which definitely did the trick!

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Double Duty for Your Daily Calendar

Lenore MacLeod-Bickley — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 22:13:25 +0000

I received a Page A Day calender this last Christmas, and I was saving the pages that I pulled each day wondering what I could do with them. I didn’t want to recycle them, since it is an adorable calendar… I had a pile sitting on my desk until I realized this morning what I could do with them: make a notepad!

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Make Both Mother Nature and Aunt Flo Happy

Lenore MacLeod-Bickley — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:13:25 +0000

There is something that happens to most women every month, regardless of if they talk about it, hide it, or pretend it doesn’t exist. That is our periods. It’s arguably the lamest part of any given month, and few women that I know talk about it with excitement. Well, I just found a great pattern for a washable pad that could make periods a little less of a pain.

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Use Mateless Socks To Spice Up Planters

Lenore MacLeod-Bickley — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 16:27:45 +0000

Everyone has had experience with the Sock Monster. This beast generally takes socks from you while your clothes are in the dryer, or they could mysteriously disappear under the bed never to be seen again. What you’re left with is a bunch of socks without their mates, and if they have any sort of design or color, it’s hard to find a decent replacement mate to go with it. I originally saw a little blurb in the recent Rachael Ray magazine about lost socks, and how you can use them to make your planters a little more exciting. Since I have quite a few of these mateless socks myself, I decided to give it a shot.

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Making a Paint Brush Caddy Out of an Old T-Shirt

Lenore MacLeod-Bickley — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 02:10:24 +0000

Even though the weather is still gloomy, and there aren’t any real signs that Spring is on the way, I have started to clean and organize my house in preparation. One of the first rooms that I tackled recently was my art room, and I realized that in one drawer I had a ton of paint brushes rolling around all willy-nilly, with no organization at all. Some of my brushes were even getting damaged that way, and so I decided to remedy the situation. I happened to have a pile of old clothes laying about, for my next “t-shirt rug project” so I grabbed one from the pile and decided to sew myself a t-shirt caddy.

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Old Broken Crayons? Not Anymore!

Lenore MacLeod-Bickley — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 01:39:57 +0000

I love coloring. All of my best creative ideas come while I’m coloring on the pages of my day planner, or the grocery list, or my husband’s left arm. I have tins and tins of crayons that I’ve collected throughout the years. I am, also, a crayon purist. Once a crayon breaks, I throw it in the tin and it is officially “out of commision.” After realizing that these crayons are just as good as the unbroken ones, I started thinking about how I could breathe new life into them. That’s how I came up with the idea to make new crayons out of old ones, with the help of some silicone molds.

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Green is the New Red: Crafting a Green Valentine’s

Lenore MacLeod-Bickley — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 22:53:26 +0000

I see fat, winged babies in the gift card aisle. I see rows upon rows of pink wrapped chocolates at every store I go to, even if it’s a tire shop. I start seeing ads for “single awareness” parties. This could only mean one thing… Valentine’s Day. With V-day rapidly approaching, and no one forgetting about it, I started to struggle for ideas to give to my husband that are cute and fun while being green and sustainable at the same time. Here are a few of the ideas I came up with, and will pass them along to you! Regardless of if you’re single, partnered, or in one of those “it’s complicated” relationships, these are fun gift ideas that could be used for any day of the year.

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Revive Your Sole/Soul With Shoe Stamps

Lenore MacLeod-Bickley — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 04:54:13 +0000

Shoes are something that most people have around. There are the pair that lurk in your closet for months and you never wear, and there are shoes that you wear every day and now have big gaping holes. When your shoes reach the end of their lifespan, here is a creative way to reuse the soles of the shoes by making customized rubber stamps.

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Lots of Fabric Scraps? Not When We’re Done With Them!

Lenore MacLeod-Bickley — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 01:39:27 +0000

After writing yesterday’s post about making a rag rug with extra fabric, I started thinking… “What about the pieces not big enough for a rug, but are big enough that I don’t want to toss them?” Well, self, here is the answer! For scraps at least 6 inches by 4 inches, you can make an iPod cover! They’re easy, simple, and are a nice way to personalize your mp3 player and keep it from getting dirty or scratched.

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Have Extra Fabric Laying Around? Make a Rag Rug!

Lenore MacLeod-Bickley — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 03:26:01 +0000

We’re in the process of making a long-distance move here at my house, from Northern Idaho to Central Oregon. With that comes a lot of random pieces of clothing, old towels, or scraps of fabric that we don’t want to throw away, but aren’t in good enough shape to send off to Goodwill. I was grasping for something to do with these scraps when the idea hit me like a ton of bricks… Make a rag rug! They’re easy to make, and they’re a good way to use all these random pieces without letting them go to waste.

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Keeping a Craft Room Green and Organized

Lenore MacLeod-Bickley — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 03:08:24 +0000

If you’re one of the lucky people that has enough space in their house to have a craft/art room, like myself, then you know how quickly things can become messy and cluttered after you’ve been working on a project. Depending on if the project has a deadline or not, it can also mean that you might use methods and materials that you wouldn’t normally. After thinking about my art room, and how that was one room that I haven’t gone in and “greened up,” I thought I would share some tips and ideas I came up with when I go to tackle my creative space.

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Cardboard Boxes Make the Best Art

Lenore MacLeod-Bickley — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 17:40:58 +0000

I recently found out about this great collabortive art piece called The Box Doodle Project. The idea is that you take a cardboard box that would otherwise be thrown out, and make art with it. Their tagline is “Make the most of the least,” and I couldn’t agree with that more. If you’ve got a cardboard box, some Sharpies or paint, and some bursting creativity, you too can be part of The Box Doodle Project.

The Box Doodle Project even has an online tool, so you can still join in on the fun if you don’t have boxes waiting to be recylced. It gives you all kinds of paint colors and marker sizes. This is a great option if you would rather recycle your boxes than make art with them, but like the idea of recycled art, or if you’ve already sent your boxes off to the recycling facility.

If you don’t want to make your own, either with real materials or online, you can still enjoy surfing through all the projects that have been posted to the Project. There are some truly awesome boxes on the website, and worth browsing through.

[Image Credit: The Box Doodle Project]

Digital Vs. Paper; The Woes of Scrapbooking

Lenore MacLeod-Bickley — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 02:48:40 +0000

When I was in Highschool, there were a few scrapbooking fanatics that I knew and kept in contact with. They had “scrapping parties” and talked about new papers they bought and how many pages they had made. It seemed a kind of code, and I was not adept enough to break it. As I grew older, the amount of “scrappers” that I knew grew exponentially, and now I feel fully emersed in the language, the lifestyle, and worst of all, the ecological consequences.

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Think Twice: Reusing Items for Double Duty

Lenore MacLeod-Bickley — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:39:15 +0000

I am all about making things last around my household. If I can turn a bunch of men’s ties into a skirt, I’m as giddy as a little kid on Christmas. Where one might see something destined to head to the landfill, I see a plethora of craft ideas just waiting for me to get started on.

My favorite double duty craft is the t-shirt quilt. I readily admit that I love t-shirts, and I buy a lot of them at any given time, which means that I grow out of them pretty quickly. I started saving shirts that I wasn’t going to wear anymore, and instead of chucking them out the door I collected them by theme and color. After a few months of this, I had enough to make a quilt! It’s super easy, and you don’t have to be a sewing master to make one. Here’s a few quick and easy tips, and you can be making your own t-shirt quilt.

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