Green Options

This is step 1 in a three step series on Green Shaving. Part 2 covers choosing the razor and part 3 will cover the aftershave.

It’s important to choose the shaving cream well and know how to use it right.

Many people buy canned shaving creams. But those pressurized cans hold surprisingly little cream. They’re also hard to recycle. The final nail in the canned cream coffin is that after using them, you smell like whatever cheap scent comes with the can. Not great if you want to impress your date. You have better options, but first let’s consider how to properly apply shaving cream.

Richard Gryzch has built what he claims is the world’s first fully sun-powered electric motorbike.

A project that has taken him more than two years. In fact, to finance building the bike Cryzch sold his other motorbikes and even a house.

He calls the bike a Solar Flyer. A name inspired by those Radio Flyer wagons.

“Everyone told me I was crazy for doing it,” he said. “But I’m riding it and it works. And it could change everything. No gas, just hit the throttle and go,” he boasted.

In celebration of my first week of summer vacation (and to make up for totally blowing off my Crafting a Green World blog responsibilities while I graded 42 final papers and calcuated 42 final grades), I am posting a serious, savvy, stash-busting craft project every day this week. I’ve put off the mending, the upkeep, the interior design, and the works-in-progress for too long, and it’s time to bust some stash and clear out some projects.

First up: my favorite pair of jeans. My dancing jeans. The jeans I hemmed with bias tape. The jeans that I wear most often when I carry my sketchbook around in my back pocket.

The jeans with the two huge, gaping holes in the back pocket.

Hurry and go dig out your favorite pair of jeans with the hole in the back pocket, because we are about to mend it.

This year, I’ve undertaken a new endeavor: I’ve started a vegetable garden. It’s an ongoing process — no harvest yet, of course — but I’m already looking forward to fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, cantaloupe, and beans that will be transported about 15 feet from garden to kitchen.

In the process, I’ve come across a number of intriguing DIY projects for growing your own food. Here are five that can help make gardening easier and, maybe, more productive.

The raised bed planter: This project is at the heart of the method I’m using for my garden — Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening system. I used leftover bricks for mine, but there are lots of different materials you could (re)use to build a garden space (and avoid the digging!). GO’s Kelli Best-Oliver contributed one great plan for this.

The upside-down planter: Yes, I’m fascinated with the Topsy Turvy, but am going to try making my own out of reused 2-litre soda bottles. I’ve found a number of different plans available online that make use of a variety of containers.

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.

If you’ve read our Must Read Book List for Green Crafters, then you know that we are eagerly awaiting Betz White’s new book Sewing Green.

Sewing Green is chock full of fun diy projects made from repurposed materials or organic fabrics. And if you’re like me, you can’t wait to get your hands on it! Well here on Crafting a Green World we’ll be giving a copy of this book away to one lucky reader! That’s right you can win Sewing Green! Woo hoo!

So how do you enter? Read the directions over on the Giveaway post. It’s that easy.

Want even more chance to win?

Our house is chock-full of vinyl mini-blinds, and one of the things that I’d most loooooove to do is to chuck them all in favor of something natural and something less likely to strangle my dear babies. I haven’t yet, however, because they are perfectly serviceable still and I can’t stand to just throw them in the trash just because I want to upgrade.

And then I thought, “Why do I hate vinyl so much?” Because it will basically never, ever decompose back into the earth.

Where, however, could such a quality ever be an asset?

In the garden, that’s where! No matter what happens between spring and fall–rain, sun, heck, the apocolypse could strike at any second–I am always going to know exactly where my chives are.

Here’s how you can transform your crap blinds into indestructable chives markers, too:

According to GreenSpaces, these three plants not only lead to fresher indoor air…but also an increase in productivity!

GreenSpaces has tested these plants for the past 15 years in a 20 year old, 50,000 ft2 building with over 300 occupants, and 1,200 plants! A study published on September 8, 2008 found that there is a 42% probability of increasing blood oxygen by 1% if one is inside the building for 10 hours. In fact, the building is rated the healthiest building in Delhi by the Government of India.

I’ve always been a total tightwad and pretty hardcore DIY, so other than the fact that my pension basically hit the floor last year, I’m remaining chill even in these trying economic times. One of the total tightwad/hardcore DIY activities that I enjoy doing at the beginning of every season is taking a look at my little girls’ wardrobes for the upcoming months, passing down what’s ready to be passed down, altering what can be altered to make it more seaonally appropriate, mending anything that’s torn or stained, and lengthening anything that my girls have grown out of.

Admittedly, I just love to sew for my kids, but even if you don’t, this method of lengthening your kiddo’s pants will give you months’ more service out of pants that are too short but still fit fine in the waist, and it really is quick and pretty easy. Of course, get ready to do it again in just a few months, because kids? They grow like weeds.

British environmentalist David de Rothschild, author of Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook, met with the San Francisco Conservation Corps on Wednesday to talk about “Plastiki,” a 60-foot catamaran made from recycled plastic (except for the masts), which he’ll use to sail from San Francisco to Australia: an 11,000 mile voyage!

The boat is made up of about 16,000 plastic bottles and is an “effort to raise awareness of the recycling of plastic bottles, which he says are a symbol of global waste.” says Rothschild. Skin-like panels made from recycled PET, a woven plastic fabric, will cover the hulls and a watertight cabin, which sleeps four. Only about 10 percent of the Plastiki will be made from new materials.