Most bike shops just toss blown out tubes once they’ve finished the repair, so there’s a good chance you can score some inner tubes for free if you hit up your local bike shop and ask them to save some for you. Free and totally recycled? Sounds fab to me! Next » How to reclaim a bike tire
Fabric retailer J&O Fabrics recently added some eco options to their line, and they’re offering a 15% discount code good through the end of November if you want to try them out. Ryan at J&O Fabrics said: Their eco-friendly line includes organic cottons as well as a 100% bamboo fabric. Folks who have followed this site for a while know my feelings about bamboo fabric. While it’s a better option than conventional cotton, when you can snag organic cotton or hemp, avoiding bamboo is a no-brainer, in my opinion....
Whether you’re trying to go paperless or just make that dusty old cabinet match your current decor, that old filing cabinet is still super useful. With a little bit of love, you can give it a new life in some fun and unexpected ways. Check out these filing cabinet makeovers! Garden Storage – Turn that old cabinet into new-to-you garden storage for organizing your rakes, shovels, and other gardening essentials....
Last week, Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of winter. Brr! Another month and a half of frigid temperatures means more of us running our heat. Here are some fun ways to warm yourself from the inside out and maybe keep your hands off of that thermostat! Craft Leftovers shows you how to make a reusable tea bag out of muslin. 2. If you want a different take on handmade tea bags, Bonzai Aphrodite has you covered!...
It’s no secret that I love food gifts for the holidays. Some food gifts, like baked goods, are best given right away, but some of them take a little bit longer. If you’re planning to make slow food gifts for the holidays like infused booze or flavored oils and vinegars, though, you need a little bit more lead time. Start these DIY food gifts now, so they’ll be ready to rock in time for holiday giving....
Their letterpress designs are printed on sustainability harvested yellow birch, creating unique postcards and journals. The wood is sliced thin to produce a large number of cards from a small amount of raw material. Each piece is different due to the variation in the wood grain and very little water and power is used in their production. The birch trees are also replanted. Their designs are simple, cute and whimsical....
We’re building a green crafts forum for you guys, and we want to know what you want! Check out the poll below to tell us what you’d use a CAGW form to do. Crafting a Green World is part of the Important Media Blog Network (IM, for short), and here at IM, we’ve had some big changes recently. The biggest change is that Scott Cooney has stepped in in a leadership role, and he’s working with a lot of the site directors on our wish lists....
Only a few recycling centers accept yogurt containers and none in my area, so most get tossed in the trash and end up in landfills (which makes me feel really, really guilty). This cute spring craft incorporates those yogurt containers and transforms them into fun animal friends that are cute, easy to make, perfect for kids and keeps the containers out of the landfill. These green friends are fun to make anytime the kids need something to keep them busy and teach them about reusing, recycling and repurposing....
Dave and I have both been really into old school design lately, especially supergraphics. If you’re not familiar with the supergraphic, it’s a design style that was popular in the 60’s and 70’s that featured bright colors and bold, often geometric shapes. My burlap paintings are sort of a miniaturized take on that idea. Want to make your own chevron paintings? It’s pretty simple and lots of fun! Here’s how… Materials...
So when I saw that my family was clearly not going to eat through that entire 10-pound bag of navel oranges before the last ones went bad, I thought briefly about marmalade and fruit leather, but then I thought, “Nah–craft supplies!”. Read on to see how to turn leftover oranges into shelf-stable craft supplies, and how to make a garland that shows off the lovely translucency of the preserved orange slices....
Throwing all your crayon stubs into a mold and baking it into new crayons is fun for a while, but eventually it gets old. During the re-heating process the wax tends to separate from the pigment, so that your new crayon may be all pigment on the bottom and all wax on the top- yuck. From a creative standpoint, you never know just what you’re going to get. Will your perfect combination of colors result in a perfect, swirly mixed crayon, or will it just be muddy and gross and all you see is that one little brown crayon bit that you threw into the mix?...
What You Will Need: Old magazines. Tape. Hot glue/Hot glue gun. Scissors Twine. If you can, use hemp twine— it’s more eco-friendly! Scrap paper. I used some red and green paper that I had left over from another project. How To Do It: Roll up your magazines like I did with the Laundry Cup Wall Art tutorial. You can choose whatever length you’d like, but mine were about 2.5 inches long....
You will need: Scissors X-acto knife or hole punch Pencil Small piece of scrapbooking paper (you can use the left over scraps for this project) Modge Podge (or something similar) Washer Aleene’s Paper Glaze 36” of ribbon or cord Next » Use the washer to trace a circle on the paper and don’t forget to trace the inside circle as well. Using your scissors cut just inside of the traced line on the outer circle....
Big rip, right? Fortunately, mending this huge rip right in the butt of my comfy jeans takes WAY less time than it would to head out shopping and buy more jeans. It’s also cheaper! Here’s the easy way to mend tears in your jeans: Clear the field of battle. Snip the loose, dangling threads away from the tear, and use a seam ripper to open up any pockets or seams that would get in the way of your sewing–you can sew them back again when you’re finished....
If people find out that you like to craft with recycled materials, they’ll start to give you stuff. I’m the happy recipient of a lot of people’s old clothes and cardboard and art supplies, and recently, I was given some really horrible chipboard embellishments from someone’s scrapbooking de-stash. Really, they were awful. They were fakey little chipboard signs that said things like “Grandpa’s Fishing Hole” and “Easter Parade,” and you glue them in your scrapbook next to your photos of ducks in bonnets and little kids wearing overalls without a shirt on underneath, I suppose....
Are you bored of your clock? You know the one I’m talking about. The old, cheap and dusty looking one you’ve had since time began? Yes that one! Do you also have some old, scratched CDs that you don’t listen to anymore? Well, thankfully, it’s finally the right time to give your old clock a much needed makeover and with your scratched CD. So, without further delay, here are a few simple steps to help transform your old timepiece in to a funky and stylish looking CD clock....
Got some scratched sunglasses, or an old pair of prescription glasses with a cracked lens? Pass them over to your kids, because this is a project just for them! Here’s how to make 3D glasses from an old pair of frames. How to Make 3D Glasses These DIY 3D glasses are an excellent kid-build, and really fun for kids to play with afterwards. Here’s what your kid should do to make them:...
Sometimes you want to make a button but you only have, say, a toy dinosaur. Or an interesting coin. Or a pinback. Here’s how to make buttons out of basically anything you want. Using sugru, this freaky moldable, adhesive, flexible silicone rubber (that I received for free so that I could play with it), I turned some custom pinback fronts, made from vintage dictionary pages, into shank buttons. Here’s how to make buttons with sugru....
Is your garden overrun with mint? Yeah, mine, too. Fortunately, there is a good use for every single sprig of that generous bounty of mint. For instance, if you’ve ever purchased mint extract for cooking or as an ingredient in your homemade bath and beauty supplies, then you know that mint extract is pricey, and organic mint extract is pricier. Read on to see this easy, nearly effortless way to make as much of your own mint extract as you could ever want!...
I don’t know about you, but if spring doesn’t come quickly I just might go bonkers! And with a 1/4 inch of ice on my deck right now (and more snow predicted for this week) I’m guessing I’ll have to get really creative if I want to channel some warm vibes. Upcycled flowers will certainly spruce up my house – and mood. So I thought I’d break into my recycle bin and show you all how to make pop bottle flowers....
