Sponsored by the Alpaca Owners and Breeders Association (AOBA), Saturday and Sunday you can visit a local Alpaca farm and learn more about these animals. Why would one want to learn more about them? Well, if you haven’t been paying attention, Alpacas produce a super soft fiber that is perfect for spinning up into so, much, amazing yarn. And the AOBA wants you to know just how green these animals are....
There’s no shopping required to make this New Year’s Eve party craft. You have everything you need right in your stash. I know that the New Year is typically about resolutions, but what if we kicked off 2016 by thinking about what we’re grateful for? I’m not knocking New Year’s resolutions at all. Setting intentions for the new year is a great thing to do, in my estimation. But I think it’s easy to get caught up in how we want to improve ourselves and forget to be thankful for what we already have....
Instead, why not use your crafty abilities and your hard-won literacy to make it easy on yourself? Save your memory for something important, like which episode of Season 12 of Call the Midwife you left off on. I, personally, have all the memory space I need to remember that I’m on Episode 4 (there’s an E. coli outbreak!), because I used plant markers to remind me where I put my Three Sisters plants this year....
China’s insatiable hunger for the utensil world’s learning curve has become so voracious that special taxes have been passed in order to save their forests from the dinner plate. Without greater efforts to stem the clickity-clack of a chopstick doomsday we may soon find gangs of pandas rampaging through Chinese villages looking to devour their eating utensils. How can you do your part to help save panda bears from a life of crime?...
Handmade has finally equalized the gift exchange, however. For our recent anniversary, Matt gave me the panini press that I’d really, really, really been wanting, and I gave him a smash book, altered from an old children’s book, that chronicles our fifteen years together. If you’ve read Mahe’s post on upcycled smash books (if you haven’t, then go do it now!), then you know that smash books are quicker, easier, and more creatively amenable to recycled components than traditional scrapbooks can be, and frankly I much prefer the look of a smash book to that of your typical carefully engineered scrapbook....
Pumpkin decorating is fun, but as a green crafter, I always feel a little nagging guilt about some of the pumpkin decorating ideas I’ve chosen in the past, especially ones where I paint my pumpkin. When you paint on a pumpkin, you’re taking a natural material that you could have composted when it outlived its usefulness and turning it into trash. Paint doesn’t come off easily, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want paint in my compost bucket....
I mean, maybe you, but DEFINITELY me! Y’all, I am REVVED UP for this solar eclipse. I’m going to have a yard full of people, I’ve got enough eclipse glasses for everybody, there will be four different kinds of lemonade on offer, and there will be solar eclipse decorations if I have to sew every single stitch myself. Which, considering that Party City doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo, I probably will!...
Finding the right sustainable fabric for your next sewing project now is easy as pie! Check out these beautiful options. Birch Fabrics These guys are one of my favorites. I used their Circa 50 fabrics to create the baby blanket and a crib sheet for my son’s space-themed nursery. Their retro organic cotton designs are beautiful and have held up well to heavy use around my house. Cloud9 This company has a beautiful collection of organic cotton fabrics in mod designs for grownup decor and cutesy prints for kids....
I know you’ve seen those junky plastic children’s wheelbarrows in, like, every single big-box store ever. Don’t buy them. They’re stupid. That cheap wheelbarrow will break after your kid tries to sit in it, or a wheel will come off, or the handle will snap, and your kid will cry. And you’ll get to throw that gigantic piece of junk into the garbage. Instead, do what this incredibly awesome guy did, and build your kid a sturdy, functioning, super fun wheelbarrow out of cardboard, duct tape, and stash PVC pipe (and you KNOW I like myself some PVC pipe!...
A vintage wedding dress, especially one passed down from a loved one, is a priceless treasure, but let’s be realistic: if it’s stained or hasn’t been maintained properly, or if grandma has eighteen children, all of whom love her equally dearly, then that vintage wedding dress doesn’t necessarily need to spend its next hundred years stuffed–lovingly stuffed, of course, but stuffed, nevertheless–into someone’s out-of-the-way storage. Not when it could be remade into heirlooms for many loved ones to hold dear....
What are your invasive plants? Is it kudzu that is the menace where you live, or is it honeysuckle? Garlic mustard? Phragmites? For me, it’s multiflora rose, but I guarantee that wherever you are, you’ve got some sort of invasive plant that’s trying to outshine your natives. You can pull it all you want, but without some sort of outreach program that will let everyone else know to pull theirs, as well, and to stop planting it–seriously, Friends, STOP planting multiflora rose!...
A knit hat is a great knitting project, whether you’re a beginning knitter or a seasoned professional because there is a knit hat pattern to suit everybody. Don’t have a ton of time? Use chunky yarn! Have ages and ages to knit in? Allow yourself to make the most beautiful, elaborately detailed hat ever! Want to use up a bunch of scraps? Make the most colorful hat on the planet!...
Cargo pants can be kind of hard to upcycle. They get worn as hard as jeans do, but they’re half the weight. They don’t lend themselves to the sorts of heavyweight projects that denim is best for, but because they’re pants, you don’t think of them when you’re making lightweight projects. Poor cargo pants! Well, I happen to be a BIG fan of cargo pants as the butch alternative to shorts, and so I always have plenty of beat-up pairs to upcycle....
It’s super simple to make vinegar drain cleaner that works. But if you don’t like a room that smells like vinegar, you can also make one that works and smells nice. Andrea at our sister site Green Living Ideas shared this simple tweak to the traditional vinegar + baking soda + boiling water drain cleaner recipe. Honestly, it’s so simple that I can’t believe I’ve been dealing with that vinegar drain cleaner smell for this long and never thought of it....
You know by now that I am obsessed with making re-usable, heirloom-quality Easter eggs. I have a vendetta against plastic Easter eggs, as should we all. But we’re also huge fans of REAL Easter eggs in our family–you know, EGG eggs! There are so many ways to decorate real Easter eggs, and that’s how it stays fun every year. Yes, you can use one of those store-bought kits (although I loathe the ones that come with plastic wraps or a bunch of accessories–you know you’re just going to trash all that crap come mid-April), but you don’t have to....
Have you ever seen lovely wooden children’s toys, cut into fanciful shapes, stained in bright colors, perhaps with woodburned accents, and wished that you could make something like that yourself? It’s actually not that hard! My kids and I make toys like these out of the lowliest material imaginable: pallet wood. And let me tell you, you are going to be SHOCKED at how well pallet wood cleans up! Our pallet wood wooden children’s toys may not be impeccably crafted–the swords always come out a little crooked, and you can definitely tell that it was a kid who held the wood burner–but they 100% hold their own against store-bought wooden toys....
Yup, knitting. You can take the inside of the cassette tape and easily knit with it. I mean, it usually got caught in the cassette player anyways. Remember how it got eaten and tangled? Ugh. Well, just be careful when you unwind the tape and treat it like any yarn that could get tangled. What can you make with your tape? Well, just about anything that you can dream up....
Inspired by her Grandmother, Stephanie, the owner of Ecobutterfly, has pursued knitting and yarn with en eye to the environment. Ecobutterfly stocks yarns that are not only organic but also fair trade. She offers Peruvian Flamme Cotton Yarn, Eco-Rainbow Lace Organic Cotton Yarn, Fine Hemp Yarn, Kusikuy Organic Cotton Yarn (more on them later), Monarch Organic Cotton Yarn and Pakucho Organic Cotton Yarn. This shop is an eco-yarn lovers dream!...
Don’t get me wrong, I love the holidays. Figuring out gifts and baking an insane amount is actually fun, but takes a lot of coordination. So I wanted to give you another option for your gift giving. The gift of time. It is the ultimate in green giving. No purchase necessary. It doesn’t consume resources. It even thwarts the consumerism that is so prevalent during this season. All’s it requires is for you to craft some room in that super busy over-scheduled life of yours....
1. Over(ly)-Easy Pincushion Speckless gives us a cute pincushion tutorial. Now I know what to do with that little square of yellow fabric. 2. Clean or Dirty Always know if your dishwasher dishes are clean or dirty with this easy project from Futuregirl. 3. Tape Measure Cover Make your tape measure pretty by using this tutorial from Whip-Up. A fabric scrap yo-yo adds a nice touch of pattern and color....
