Green Options

Last week when I was in Brooklyn I encountered the most excellent recycled lamp shade creation ever. Innovative New York based artist and designer, Sabina Batelman, has constructed colorful translucent lamp shades from old 35mm film slides. It is a lamp shade and a slide show simultaneously—utter genius.

By now you’ve heard all about the devastating earthquake that struck the capital city in Haiti. It is overwhelming, scary and getting the supplies, relief and money needed to make a dent in the utter devastation seems like an insurmountable task.

But us makers are a crafty bunch, running sales, donations and silent auctions to raise money to help. So here are a few ways to rise to the occasion with the craft community:

Do you like crafts? Do you like learning and making greener crafts? Do you constantly refresh Crafting a Green World, eagerly awaiting our next post?

Well, why not join the team and be a part of the green crafting blogosphere?

Crafting a Green World is on the hunt for a couple of super awesome crafters that want to share their green crafting knowledge with the world. That’s right, we are on [...]

The interior decorator tasked with the redecoration of the Obama’s private quarters in the White House has introduced chandeliers built around waste materials into his proposals. These chandeliers links rural development in South Africa to the White House.

Magpie Art Collective

Magpie, a socially conscious art collective, was founded in 1998 by designer Scott Hart and social entrepreneur Shane Petzer. It produces ornate light fittings, home décor and jewelry crafted from, among other things, recycled glass bottles, yoghurt containers, plastic, dog food cans, mosaic, bits of mirror, toys, charms and copper wire.

If you frequent your local farmer’s market, being a crafty person that you are, you bring along your very own handmade bags to carry home your produce, right? Right. In fact no matter the market, I bet you have a handmade tote bag that is at hand to carry home your loot.

Well, what about the non crafty people? Should they be relegated to using plastic bags? What if everyone was given a free handmade bag to carry home their fresh produce instead of those plastic bags? And what if these bags were made out of fabric left overs such as outgrown t-shirts and scraps?

Bags for the People was formed in reaction to when Glenn Robinson would work at his local farmers market in Union Square in New York and hand out hundreds of hundreds of plastics bags every day. He would see people that would bring their own bags, but they would still rely on some plastic, too.

Having some free time on his hands Robinson used some old clothing to create bags that he then gave away at the farmers market to help curb plastic bag use. The simple idea was received very well and people thought they were being given a gift with their purchase. “People were so excited to get these bags,” Robinson said.

I’ve tried to make bowls using the outside of one as a mold.  I like the idea of using the inside of the bowl better.  The only trick is to grease up the inside of the bowl so that your dried paper bowl will release. My instructions say to use petroleum jelly, however I am looking for an alternative since I don’t want to use petroleum based products.

Here’s how to make a paper mache bowl. 

There’s been some interesting thoughts floating around the internet about rural, tacit and generational knowledge that we as a species are losing.

It seems strange to think that we could lose knowledge, especially in today’s world of information on demand, but if you think about it, certain skills and know how are hard to come by.

At the end of 2008, over one half of the world’s population lived in urban areas. Urban lifestyles come with their own characteristics and culture and so do rural lifestyles. Urban populations don’t have ready access to many of the experiences as rural populations do. General knowledge of where our food comes from for example, the simple act of gardening, knowing the planting seasons, identifying plants and knowing when to harvest; having the understanding of why bees are important, is not something that city dwellers grow up experiencing and knowing.

Based on this, I consider myself very luck to have grown up in a semi-rural area. I was close enough to a city but within easy distance to farms, lakes and rural towns. I learned many things because of this, both craft related and non-craft related and continue to acquire various tactile knowledge (err tacit, but I like tactile better) and I hope to never stop.

In the near and distant future (2015) most disposable plastic bags you get at the local store will be made from up to 40% recycled content.

To reach this goal the American Chemistry Council announced a new initiative to invest in the collection and manufacturing of these bags. The recycling of plastic bags and wraps has escalated in recent years to an estimated 830 million pounds in 2007. This represents a 27 percent increase from 2005. Still, additional material will need to be collected for manufacturers to reach their goal. About 470 million pounds of plastic will be reclaimed for the manufacturing of new bags and will help in the development of plastic recycling and using recycled plastic content. Expect in-store recycling programs and the visibility of such programs to increase to help reach these goals.

Now, not all bags will be made from 40% recycled content and most will only achieve 25% recycled content. And it is unclear if you will be able to tell which bag contains which percentage.

So what does this mean for us crafters?

CONGRATULATIONS to Tina in Boston for winning our giveaway of Sewing Green! Be on the look out for an email from us for further details.

Thank you to everyone who entered. We here at CAGW have been rejuvenated and inspired by all of your upcycling ideas! Don’t forget your other chances to win this beautiful book, you can find out where to enter here.

I know you’ve waited with bated breath so here it is, your chance to win a copy of Sewing Green, the latest and greatest book by Betz White, author of Warm Fuzzies.

Sewing Green offers 25 cute projects made from repurposed or organic materials. Learn how to make aprons and wallets from dress shirts, and sandwich wraps, and lounge pants from organic and thrifted fabrics. The projects are are direct and easy to follow even for this crafter who likes to skip ahead and tweak things. I especially like the sandwich wrap project and the use of PUL - a material that is not vinyl and one that I need to look into more.

White’s favorite project from the book is the woodland draft buster, a much more refined version of the draft catcher that I created a while back. This version looks like an adorable tree branch that helps you save money on your heating bill. White wanted everything in the book to have a good purpose without being preachy. She wanted everything to be fun and easy and show that any one can do these projects and be eco-friendly. “You don’t have to suffer,” she said. “Suffering is not involved.”

Continue reading to enter the contest!

Have you ever come across a craft project and just couldn’t wait to go home and try it? For me it was this simple and really cool project from the queen of craft: Martha Stewart. Perfect for Easter egg dying or just because.

Using silk ties that are destined for Good Will, a bit of scrap fabric, and boiling water, you can dye eggs. Yup, dye them with the ties! It is sort of like magic, or chemical reactions even.

I am still looking for ways to transform my stash of plain boring notecards. I showed you how to use fabric scraps and stamps to “recover” the card. Now I want to share a fun way to turn an ugly blank-inside card into a lovely postcard or notecard.  In a two part series I will show you how to make inside out notecards using a craft punch (like the oak leaf card) in Part 1 and how to make inside out notecards with your own cut out design (like the “Hi.” card) in Part 2.