Green Options

I rarely ever come across a piece of fabric that is in perfect shape.

I gather almost all of my fabric from thrift stores, yard sales, recycling centers, and the occasional dumpster, and its condition generally ranges from very well-loved to near-pristine with the odd red wine or tomato sauce stain.

A lot of vintage fabrics can be restored, but some stains, or fading, or damage from long-term folding, can’t be restored to the same color or strength of the the original fabric.

And that’s an additional challenge to the fun of working with thrifted or vintage fabrics. Here’s how to work around the blemishes:

I’ve given handmade gifts to family and friends for years now, but I never before really cared all that much about how they were wrapped.

My biggest accomplishments were wrapping a box in the comics page from the newspaper (I know–how original) or in a brown paper bag turned inside out to hide the logo.

If I was feeling extra-inspired, perhaps I’d have my girls draw decorations on the brown paper bag or newspaper, but that was about it.

This year, however, I’m feeling inspired to make my gifts’ wrappings as beautiful as the gifts themselves. Perhaps it’s because my budget is tighter than ever (not only am I crafting all my gifts, but I’m crafting them solely from STASH), and so I want the outside to be extra-pretty to make up for it, or perhaps it’s just a new outlet for my crafty mindset.

Either way, you can play, too!

Sometimes the simplest thing is the best.

Okay, the simplest thing is the best thing nearly always in my house, but even if you generally go the elaborate route, taking a break to do a few simple tasks–say, make some easy-peasy Christmas ornaments–can actually be really refreshing.

These Christmas ornaments, made from repurposed or recycled papers (like my Christmas cards), are extremely simple to make. You can freehand them or use cookie cutters, laminate them or simply sandwich cardboard in between, embellish them or leave them plain–whatever you want with whatever you have.

The key to giving these ornaments big impact is to choose papers that are extremely meaningful to you. Were there a couple of extra photos leftover when you had your Christmas pictures printed? Is your daughter’s report card cute but at the end of a reeeeeally long to-be-scrapbooked queue? Here’s what to do:

Whether you are a hoarder of pretty papers or you take your art materials at random from the recycling bin, the holidays are an excellent time to use up the little bits and scraps of paper that tend to otherwise get lost or discarded.

At our house, our holidays are primarily handmade (except for Santa, of course–Santa’s been shopping the deals all year long), and I try not to buy any new materials when making my gifts and other projects, either.

AND I do almost all of my crafting with two little kids either actively helping, or at least in tow, so my stuff can’t be super-complicated or destroyed by the input of a five-year-old.

Hence the introduction of these fun little scrap paper cards, which are easy and satisfying AND just about free to make.

And no, I’m not talking “old-school” like when you were in school, I’m talking “old-school” like Ma Ingalls.

Paper dolls have always been an exercise in upcycling and creative re-use. You think Ma Ingalls bought special fancy paper to make dolls for Laura and Mary? Or cut their paper dolls out of a Dover paper doll book?

Hell, no she didn’t! Seriously, this is the same woman who had her kid carrying around a corn cob wrapped in a handkerchief as a doll.

My kids are pretty gullible, but I don’t think even I could pull that one off. However, after finishing reading Little House in the Big Woods together (one chapter a night, followed by one episode of Meerkat Manor on Netflix, followed by me sitting in the dark and goofing around on the Internet while streaming Bright Eyes on Pandora until I hear two sets of snores), the girls and I have been on a huuuuuge paper doll kick, and although they can sucker me into breaking out the scrapbook paper once in a while, we generally kick it old-school with the following SWEET recycled papers:

If you have some ugly old Christmas cards on hand, it’s an awesome fix to make them over with fabric scraps.

Even if you don’t have card one, however, you can still send out a full roster of holiday greetings to your loved ones.

With some plain cardstock or other papers of similar weight (think glossy magazine pages, or the covers of thick catalogues or phone books, etc.), you can use your same pretty fabric scraps to make a completely new card that’s completely you.

And if you have something else awesome for embellishment–vintage buttons, leftover sequins, extra beads–even better!

Here’s how:

At an Upcycle Exchange event a couple of months ago, I scored the awesomest vintage wallpaper swatchbook ever. I have loads of vintage upholstery swatchbooks that I craft with probably every day, so I was super-stoked to receive a wallpaper swatchbook.

Until I actually tried to work with it. After totally thrashing the cutting mat for my Cricut, I realized that the wallpaper in this particular swatchbook was waaaaay too brittle to do most of the wallpaper craft projects that I’d had in mind.

And of course, there’s no point in actually wallpapering with any of the hundred or so 20″x20″ samples.

Or is there? Imagine a huge number of wallpaper swatches, all in complementary colors and patterns. Are you imagining what I’m imagining?

You betcha! Decoupage!

I’ve been having so much fun with my Crafty Green Book Reviews (I didn’t realize that I had so much to say about Weekend Sewing until I started sayin it), you might be able to tell, as well, that I have been way into paper crafting lately. I have always GOT to be doing something with my hands or I am not mentally healthy, and since I forgot my Ravenclaw House Scarf project when I packed for my vacation to California, I’ve discovered that paper-folding is just about as easy to do at an in-law’s house as it is at home.

Without access to my crafts books and supplies and works-in-progress from home, I’ve become interested again in a web site I discovered a little while ago: Disaster Dioramas by Spitefuls.

Each file set contains all the components necessary to cut out and create a diorama of a given disaster—the diorama of Pompeii appeals to my Classical Studies background, while the diorama of the Titanic appeals to that Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet movie that I saw in the theater three, count them THREE times. And then I bought the two-VHS set. And I might still have that set, to pass down to my daughters, you know.

Organic Crafts: 75 Earth-Friendly Art Activities, by Kimberly Monaghan, is technically a crafting book for children, but as I played with some of the projects in it with my girls, I noticed that many of the projects had the kind of simple-looking sophistication–an effect, I’m sure, of the usage of natural materials to create the projects–that I really like to see in the projects that I, myself, do.

And so, this green crafty book review will look a little different than my review of Weekend Sewing or the Crafty Chica’s Guide to Artful Sewing. I’m starting from the presumption that many of the projects in Organic Crafts will be too simple to appeal to an adult crafting for herself, and that’s okay.

Some projects, however, are pretty awesome, and it’s those that I’m going to review.

I don’t know how or when it happened, but kids’ birthdays somehow seem to be an open invitation for non-stop excess. I consider myself an environmentalist, for instance, and yet for the past few years I’ve made a shopping trip every summer specifically for paper plates and napkins and plastic cups just for my children’s birthday party. The plates are biodegradable and the napkins are compostable, sure, and we do shrink plastic projects with the cups after we wash them, but still—yikes! And consider that just one example of the horrors that birthday party planning can wreak upon a heretofore budget-minded, eco-friendly family.

This year we’re trying for a more eco-friendly, as well as less expensive, birthday celebration. And we’re starting with the invitations—DIY, kid-created from recycled materials or from stash, and reflective of the simple and casual affair that we’re hoping to host this year.

If you’re in need of your own birthday party invitations or invitations to anything, here are some good ideas for simple, DIY invites you and your kids can create for yourselves:

A list of things that I always buy whenever I see them at any garage sale: Spirographs, Legos, comic books, vinyl record albums, Scrabble games, and salad spinners.

You can never have too many Spirographs or Legos, I craft with comic books, records, and Scrabble tiles, and you can use the lowly plastic salad spinner, however beat up or unworthy-looking of touching an actual salad, to make one of the coolest kinds of gimmick artwork around:

Spin art basically rules. Here’s how to work it:

You will need: