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Although I prefer Mason jars for all of the foaming soap dispensers in my house (I pick antique Mason jars out of a 1950-s era dump that the former owners of my home didn’t tell me was in the back of the six-acre property–good times!), this tutorial will work just as well for any glass jar whose mouth is the right size to fit a canning jar lid. Some spaghetti sauce jars, for instance, are actually really cute, and some even have the embossing to make them identical to canning jars....

Well they’re supposed to anyway but currently most of my files are filled up and everything is in a pile right now waiting to be put away. Good thing I came across Cameron Blazer from the Cottage Industrialist who has created a wonderful tutorial for creating a simple DIY expandable file folder from a cereal box and some other crafty bits. This is a fabulous DIY project for those who need a little help getting organized....

Hung on the walls inside my house, perhaps these leaf prints will help me hang on through the winter. At least, especially in early February, they will remind me that seasons do exist besides winter. And sometimes, especially in early February, that’s all the hope that you can ask for. Leaf prints can be made with any material from watercolors to fabric paint, and on any surface from artist’s papers to your walls....

Decoupaging glass bottles is a cheap, easy way to upcycle something plain and ordinary into something unusual and outstanding. Tissue paper is especially fun to work with because it comes in such a wide variety of colors, and it looks nice when overlapped–this makes tissue paper decoupaged glass bottles a great kid craft! It’s also an easy way to transform a glass bottle that doesn’t have a ton of personality, such as these old wine bottles, or that you can’t quite get all the label glue off of....

My friends, this is no lie! The good people at Bedrock have tumbled glass for all kinds of crafty and gardeny adventures. I love the colors available in their mosaic glass, and mosaic is a craft I’ve always wanted to try. Their glass is 100% pre-consumer recycled glass, taken from the waste generated during the production of stained glass. They process it a bit to make sure it won’t slice your finger off and voila, loveliness....

Okay, friends. Christmas is in less than two weeks. It just got real over here. I try to keep the holiday dialed-down–I mean, what’s the point of a family celebration if you’re just going to stress out about it?–but I still lose sight of what’s important pretty often. My desire to keep my kids grounded in reality vs. my desire to give them ALL THE THINGS. My desire to keep the holiday low-key vs....

What do you do with a ratty old interior door, one that sports at least three different layers of peeling paint but that is otherwise a solid ole’ boy, one that you would like to look a lot less crappy but that you do NOT want to spend a weekend taking off its hinges, dragging outside, sanding, repainting, dragging back inside, and screwing back on its hinges? Slap yet another layer of paint on it, that’s what!...

Pi Day is March 14. Well, if you want to get nerdy about it, it’s March 14 at 1:59 and 26 seconds, and you know I ALWAYS want to get nerdy! But for the purpose of celebrating the universal constant that is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, let’s just go with March 14 as a whole. That way we get to celebrate all day! Days like Pi Day (and Star Wars Day, which comes a couple of months later, and the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts, also in May), are fun ways to add a little splash of festivity into what would otherwise be a normal day....

Greener Printer is a great source for all of your typical promotional needs: business cards, postcards, brochures, newsletters, and much more. They make use of recycled paper, vegetable and soy inks, and 100% wind power to produce their entire line of paper goods. They’re a Certified Green business, can ship your goods Carbon Free, and even offer a nifty “Eco Audit” that calculates the environmental impact of each individual order you place....

They also print tote bags from utility grates, and gym bags from concrete! Raubdruckerin is a Berlin-based printer that focuses on printing from found urban signage. I mean, have you ever looked at a manhole cover in your town? It’s kind of pretty, isn’t it, at least if you turn your head and squint? And doesn’t it also perhaps include some iconography of your town or state, something that identifies it and puts the manhole cover into geographic context?...

Have you entered our giveaway yet for a $25 gift certificate at Starlight Woods? Lisa Disciascio creates fresh, modern jewelry using reclaimed wood from fallen limbs. Using felled branches from storm-damaged trees, she creates beautiful rings, pendants, and earrings. She hand-crafts each piece, and since every tree branch is unique, so is every piece of jewelry that she makes. Lisa is giving away a $25 gift certificate to her Starlight Woods shop to one lucky Crafting a Green World reader, and she was also kind enough to chat with us about what she does and why she does it....

[Image 1 by Claire Baker for Copabananas, Image 2 and 3 by Lisa Jordan for Lil fish Studios, Image 4 by Claire Baker for Copabananas, Image 5 by Mary E. Walker for Sewing Geek, Image 6 by Liesl Maertens for Liesl Made, Image 7 and 8 by Beth Carls for Blue Valentine Press]

I had the chance to try out a few pads of paper from their XL Series of artist pads. The XL series of art pads are made from recycled paper that contain at least 30% of post-consumer materials. I compared these papers to other artist pads I’ve tired and I’m impressed. The heavy duty bristol paper is a thick paper which is double sided where one side is smooth while the other is textured....

Got an old deck of playing cards that’s missing a card or two (who doesn’t?!?)? Don’t throw it out! Instead, check out the brilliant project that Bare Branch Blooming creates using old playing cards: she turns them into re-usable stencils. I can’t even tell you how much I LOVE this project–store-bought re-usable stencils tend to be made from super-gross, highly-polluting plastic, and my usual DIY methods of jiggering my own stencils (freezer paper, contact paper, cardboard, etc....

The bad thing was we didn’t know much about refinishing furniture. My husband sanded it down to remove the old varnish or whatever it was covering it then we painted it. Probably not the best idea. It looked good at first but as the paint dried it also started bubbling and peeling. Whatever the old dresser had been finished with must have been oil based, plus having served as a work bench for so long some oily substance had been spilled on it and never cleaned up as it has seeped into the wood and become a permanent stain on one side and along most of the top....

Like one of those “kid-tested, mother-approved” cereals, washi tape is exactly that. My kids love washi tape because it’s colorful and easy to use. I love washi tape because it’s made from natural fibers, so it’s eco-friendly, and it’s backed with a low-tack adhesive, so even the most enthusiastic applications of it are easy to remove. Totally Washi, by Ashley Ann Laz, which I received free to review, contains tutorials for 50 kid-friendly washi tape projects....

Everyone loves to receive a handmade card. That handmade card is even more beloved when it’s personalized. Greeting cards are easy to personalize with nothing more than glue and the Scrabble tiles taken from a thrifted Scrabble game. Adults can do some extra cool, extra complicated, extra fancy cards with their Scrabble tiles, but kids, especially, are thrilled at how easy it is to make a card for a friend using this method....

Don’t you love a sugar scrub? There are lots of ways to exfoliate and moisturize your skin, but for me, a sugar scrub turns an everyday shower or bath into a spa-like experience. They feel rich and luxurious, they smell amazing, and they leave your skin feeling silky soft. I created this spiced sugar scrub for winter months to help ease a little of the chill out of your hands, feet, or anywhere else you need a little extra moisturizing power....

Have you ever met an unplayable record? I collect vintage records, and so I’ve met a LOT of them! Most people don’t know how to properly store records anymore (hint: NOT in your attic, NOT laying flat and stacked one on top of another…), which means that a lot of the vinyl records that I encounter are warped beyond what I’m willing to repair solely to have another Liberace or Disco Duck album....

Even if you cook most of your family’s meals from scratch, chances are you end up with cardboard food containers. Maybe you cracked open a box of crackers for a party or really wanted cookies, but didn’t want to make them from scratch just this once. Don’t toss that empty in the recycle bin! Here are some fun ways to reuse cardboard food containers instead. Ways to Reuse Cardboard Food Containers Make Postcards – Cardboard food containers are the perfect weight for making mailable postcards....