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Syncopation Company was founded by two women who found that staying at home with their kids meant reevaluating their consumption patterns. The challenge of balancing budgets led to the realization that often, things we would otherwise throw away could become the raw materials for creativity. In addition to the bottlecap necklaces, Syncopation has jewelry made from watch faces, watch gears, spoons, mah jong tiles, hardware, rulers, bottle openers, rain gutters, vintage tape measures, marbles, phone buttons, and much, much more....

Here are ten fun ways to reuse, repurpose and upcycle your tin cans. Use old tin cans to make storage containers. The easiest and most common usage is to turn old cans into pen and pencil holders for your desk. You can spray paint them, cover them with scrapbook paper or let your kids decorate them with stickers. This is a super cheap solution for a problem many people have when it comes to their desks…wayward pens and pencils....

Ecolana is a 60% Alpaca 40% Merino Wool blend yarn that is produced with environmentally friendly production methods. The yarn comes in 11 beautiful and natural colors where no chemicals or dyes were used to produce the different shades. All the colors and patterns of the selection of yarns comes from the various shades and natural colorings of the alpaca itself. Check out the special “twisted” colors where various colors are carefully spun together for a two or three-toned effect that is quiet lovely, perfect for a warm sweater or snugly scarf....

But using your hair, human hair, as fiber to create clothing can be done, as this woman from Romania has shown us. (Hat tip to CraftStylish for the story.) Bistrita Nasaud, grew her hair from the age of 16 until it was 40 inches long so she could weave it and created nine items of clothing out of her hair. While it looks like she did not technically knit with her hair, it seems that the same basic principals of collecting and spinning dog hair would apply here....

If you love to garden and you have kids, then you know that the two don’t always mix. Even when they’re trying to be helpful, they rarely have the same interest in proper planting depths and gentle watering that you do, they can’t always tell a weed from a seedling, and the other day, I looked over at my daughter, who was supposed to be helping me put composted manure around our strawberry plants in our garden, and noticed that she was doing so while standing directly ON a strawberry plant....

It’s free! It’s environmentally unfriendly! What it is? It’s that drawstring backpack that you were given as a freebie the last time that you signed up for a bank account, or registered your kid for an afterschool activity, or donated to a charity, or, frankly, did anything that put you in the eye of Those Who Give Out Free Drawstring Backpacks. As you might have guessed, I HATE those free drawstring backpacks....

Spring is here, but there’s no time to stop and smell the flowers. Hiking, gardening, festivals – there’s so much to do. And let’s not forget about crafting! So how do you get through that to-do list without crashing and burning? Easy – make these 2 easy energy bar recipes. There are only a few ingredients in each one and they only take a few minutes to whip up. Vegan Choco-Coconut Energy Balls These vegan energy balls are amazingly dee-lish....

Halloween is right around the corner and Celebrate Green has a lot to say about greening Halloween including some crafty things you can do yourself like make your own face paints, create fun costumes and decorations, even turn everyday ordinary objects into candy buckets and containers. It’s also full of yummy recipes and fun ideas for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The apple pie recipe for Thanksgiving, yummy and the suggestions for setting a sustainable table are great....

I love making things for parties and when it came to decorating my wedding I was very hands on. That’s why I really like The Green Wedding Guide: Creating a Celebration That’s Elegant and Ethical by Valerie Edmunds. Edmunds combines green wedding planning advice with eco-friendly wedding crafts for a one of a kind book eco-brides to be will love. In my own green wedding guide-The Everything Green Wedding Book, I was only able to devote one chapter to DIY style eco-craft projects....

Northeastern green crafters! Are you looking to add a show to your spring craft market schedule? The REPURPOSE Art Show in Eastern Massachusetts is looking for eco-friendly crafters for their upcoming show. The market is from April 18 through May 31, but don’t fret: you don’t have to man a booth that whole time. For this show, you drop off your handmade wares, and when the show wraps, you pick up what’s left, and they cut you a check for your sales....

Did you know that Post-its or sticky notes, are not just for jotting down quick to-do items? You can craft with them too! And as the company 3M is working on becoming more sustainable, they have introduced new eco-friendly Post-it products, which are also great to use in crafting. And if you use the new eco-friendly Post-its and register them at www.post-it.com/onetree, Post-it will plant a tree! Some of the new products eligible for this promotion include:...

Since having a baby, I have been getting more into crafts for kids. I can’t wait for the day that my son asks me if we can finger paint, make miniature rockets, or build paper structures together. Is that something all new crafty parents do? I love playing with my baby boy, and I can’t wait for the day that he can wield a paint brush, a pair of safety scissors, and a glue bottle....

I never thought that we’d be people who made homemade dog treats. We used to be cat people. I even tried making cat treats with my kid once, but as soon as we’d opened the canned salmon that the recipe called for, the smell of it knocked me on my butt and I left the house, retching. The kid ended up just giving the salmon to the cat. We still dote on our cats, but my other kid was the impetus for bringing a dog into our lives, and it turns out that we’re dog people, too!...

Desperate for a way to organize and store your jewelry? Create an upcycled DIY jewelry organizer! I found the coolest upcycled project at a garage sale and had to share it with you guys! I want to be up front and say that I didn’t create this organizer — I simply painted it. Even so, it was too awesome not to share! The woman who sold it to me said that the frame was the molding from an antique table and then she attached the screen mesh....

Sand art, the practice of layering colored sand into glass jars, may seem a little nostalgic, but I assure you, it’s still around. However, children’s sand art kits tend to be very eco-unfriendly, with their inclusion of plastic containers instead of glass, and the other main outlet for sand art, the wedding market, can get pricey fast. Fortunately, with the generous use of natural, recycled, or stash components, you can make sand art that’s eco-friendly, practically free, and centered on your own personal style....

So you might notice that here on CAGW I post a lot of tutorials for washable covers for furniture. I’ve got couch covers, chair covers, tablecloths and cozies of all kinds to attempt to save my stuff from the negligence of me and everyone around me. And the latest on the list? Cushion covers for my benches! It’s easy to see why the hallway bench needs a cushion cover, because that’s where everybody takes off their muddy boots and clay-covered sneakers and grimy yard Crocs....

It should be pretty clear to you by now that something can never be “too” embellished for my tastes. Too much glitter? No way. Too many colors of paint? Impossible! I have an actual strategy in which, if I’m embellishing something and I don’t like it, I keep adding more stuff until I do. Works. Every. Time. That being said, of COURSE a plain black photo mat is not going to be embellished enough for me....

My two kids share a bedroom, and all of their clothing is kept inside fabric bins in a shelf of cubbies in their room. The bins are two different colors, and you’d think that it would be no big deal for the older kid to remember, “Hey, my bin color is white!” and the other kid to remember, “Hey, my bin color is black!” Disregarding this, you’d also think it would be no big deal, if a kid did happen to reach into the wrong bin, for her to say, “Hey, this shirt doesn’t fit me at all, and also belongs to my sister!...

What You Will Need: A planter of some sort. This is what mine looked like before: Low VOC spray paint An all purpose cleaner A rag How To Do It: Your planter was mostly likely used as a planter (duh, right?), so it’s important to clean it before painting. Use a handmade all purpose cleaner and a rag to get it spic and span! Then, let it dry. Spray paint your planter(s)....