Crafting a Green World

Folksy is a new online place for you crafty people in the UK, to make, sell and buy. Folksy champions cool crafts and design talent. It connects designers and crafters who have great things to sell with other like minded people who want individual, quality items that are made with love.

You can search Folksy for items by type, including handmade supplies, and of particular interest - recycled! You can also search by materials and technique. Folksy also has a small campaign that brings you right to the bags page, stating that plastic bags are out and totes are in.

For sellers, setting up a shop looks to be a pretty straight forward and simple process. It is only open to UK sellers, but plans to open up to international sellers is in the works.

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Eco Emporia is a new online shop based in the UK, that sells desirable objects made from discarded things. They have a range of eco-friendly gifts such as accessories created from felted sweaters, beautiful jewelery made from electronic components, bowls and necklaces made from chopsticks, plus wall art made from hand painted records. Everything is individually handmade by skilled craftspeople.

Founded by husband and wife team Anna and Peter Burns, Eco Emporia came to be after the couple was inspired by the craftspeople they met on numerous travels around the world. “Reusing and recycling is a way of life for many people around the world,” said Anna. “It’s about making the most of limited resources and income. As a result they create something new, useful and often ingenious. I remember being most impressed by the Uros people on Lake Titicaca in Peru. They created amazing boats by weaving lake reeds and kept them afloat using hundreds of recycled plastic drink bottles.”

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I’ve become quite nostalgic as summer has been winding down and the unofficial start of fall has come and gone. Soon, shorter days and cooler nights will be upon us and the fall harvest of vegetables got me thinking about more than just bees. My thought process is always an interesting one to follow so bear with me.

We know that vegetables led me to bees, but the vegetables also got me to thinking about canning. Then the act of canning led me down the road of the cans themselves and particularly tin cans and then that naturally led me to tin can phones. Phew!

The tin can is such a sturdy and mutli-purpose recyclable. I might be dating myself but, remember playing with a tin can phone? Stretching a line between two tin cans and talking nonsense to your best friend? Well, beyond making these fun and science filled relics of my childhood, I thought I would hunt for some other ideas on what to do with your leftovers and found some great crafters that have taken the tin can and made some beautiful art.

Etsy user MariposaAvenue has created amazing lamp shades from tin food cans. I especially love the organic shapes cut into the cans that create soothing patterns on the wall when lit from within.

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Etsy, the crafting gal (and guy’s) favorite marketplace is holding a Handmade Kids Challenge, which showcases all the crafts made for kids on Etsy.

Expert judging has started in seven categories, one of which is “eco-friendly”, and winners in each category will get a $200 Etsy shopping spree. Check out the eco-friendly entries!

More info, including a chance for you to win an Etsy shopping spree, after the jump… Read the rest of this entry »

Creating mix tapes was an essential part of growing up. Spending hours poring over music, getting the mix just right. Fast-forwarding and rewinding to ensure the perfect timing. Waiting patiently listening to the radio, to record that perfect song (a past time that today’s youth will never no the joys. But that’s a rant for anther time.) And all for that special someone.

And being on the receiving end of a treasured mix tape, you knew that your love would last forever. That is until he started to make a tape for that girl in second period math class.

Ah young, fickle love.

Taking cassettes to the next level, these crafters have taken old tapes and remade them, or remixed them, into some pretty nifty items:

• Over at Craftster, freepepper has created this wonderful wallet (pictured) out of a cassette tape. Instructables has a good tutorial on how to make one of your own.

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So, flip flops.  I don’t wear them, but you very well might.  Here in Austin, they’re everywhere, from McDonald’s to the nicest restaurants in town.  We’re a casual people.

(Yes, I ate at McDonalds!  I get one milkshake there about every four years!  Yes, I know it’s wrong!  I was having a really bad day!  I’m sorry!)

UniqEco is just one of the companies making crafts out of recycled flip flops, but I heart them the most.  The company was started in response to an ecological nightmare - discarded flip flops washing up on Kenyan beaches in vast numbers.  (Apparently, y’all flip flop wearers aren’t that concerned about what happens to your footwear - but since they don’t actually provide any protection for your feet, it kind of makes sense that you wouldn’t notice they were missing.)  The invading flip flop armada kept turtle mamas from laying eggs and baby turtles, if any, from getting back into the ocean. Read the rest of this entry »

This weekend is the biggest festival of the year in Asheville NC - which normally would frighten me since there are huge crowds, bad music, and freaky combinations of food smells wafting about these events. This year I decided to go on a treasure hunt, specifically a green crafting hunt! It turned out that 1/3 of the booths were representing environmental causes from biodiesel, recycling, petitioning to save trees, to the ever alluring eco minded crafts. It is totally rad that the world is catching the green fever.

Now you can take a virtual walk with me through a few of my favorite festival crafts…

It never ceases to amaze my inner child when I see someone has taken funked out metal parts and welds them together to make whimsical creatures. This flying bird monster & friends looks like it all began with a tiny BBQ propane tank. Read the rest of this entry »

–Don’t forget! Carnival of Green Crafts is fast approaching. Send in your submissions now.–

Out of all the items found in my recycle bin, glass bottles are the ones that puzzle me the most. I know that we can make plastic beer rings into beautiful silver necklaces and the bottle caps into pendants and pincushions but what about the bottle itself?

Glass is one of those crafts that is very elusive to me. First there is the process of creating it which involves very high temperatures, taking hot molten glass and using tools that, by necessity, keep you at a far distance. Second, there is a certain aesthetic that glass caries that just isn’t my cup of tea.

I am definitely intrigued by the process of glass making and have spent much time interrogating friends that have taken glass blowing workshops. I am oddly fascinated by it, even if I’m not attracted to it aesthetically. Juliet got me thinking with John Bassett’s glass sculptures but I wanted more. That is why I was pleased as punch to come across a group of Etsy sellers that recycle empty glass bottles and turn them into a variety of wonderful and quirky objects.

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I’m a big sucker for silver jewelry. I don’t often wear very much of it, but every once in a while I come across a piece that I absolutely love and must have. In a store, that I found this past week, was a basket full of rings. Not just any rings, but rings made from old cutlery; rings made from the ends of spoons and the tines of forks.

I know spoon wear has been around for a while, but it’s one of those things that I always forget about until confronted with it. It is a very clever craft that recycles the ordinary and turns it into the extraordinary. Thinking that these rings are the cat’s meow I purchased a fork ring which now sits comfortably on my hand.

Want one of your own? A quick trip through Etsy brought up a couple of designers that specialize in this area and are doing a fantastic job of it.

LT Creates Jewelry makes many wonderful items out of cutlery. Rings, bracelets and even watches made from spoons and forks can be found in their shop.

Dank Artistry also makes spoon jewelry. Check out the rings, bracelets, earrings and even bell pendants made from the end of a spoon and given a clapper. I can hear the small ting, ting that it would make.

Have a piece of cutlery you wear? Tell us about it in the comments.

Image credit: LTCreatesJewelry

Steampunk, a genre combining future living with the romance of the Victorian era, started to come to prominence in the 1980’s. Influenced by fantasy and science fiction writing, and inventions for time-travel by H. G. Wells, steampunk has started to trickle into the mainstream in recent years.

It has gone beyond being relegated to the novel and expanded into all other aspects of art and design, making its way into fashion as well. The style is most often characterized by the use of found and repurposed objects, open circuitry and exposed gear cogs. There is also a blog devoted to all things steampunk called The Steampunk Workshop.

The mentality of do-it-yourself that is pervasive within steampunk is what helps this aesthetic cross into green culture. The clothes, jewelry and modded phones and computers are all created with vintage or thrifted items to achieve the proper “look.”

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