Green Crafter Profile: Green Gypsies

WINE THEME MAGNETS SET TWO choose any 3

Karin McArdle of Green Gypsies creates her one-of-a-kind pieces in a tiny Florida beach town with her husband and two chocolate labs. They all travel (in an eco-friendly RV, natch) to estate sales, antique malls, and yard sales to gather materials for her next creation as the old adage rings true for her: “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

Green crafting was never something that she intentionally set out to do. It evolved when she “discovered that she enjoyed using rescued materials for her creations.”  She says of green crafting that “the materials and pieces speak to her,” and she will gather them without an intended purpose at first. Her Sassy Sayings collection, for example, came together many years after acquiring the materials for her line. She picked up ceramic tiles at a neighbor’s yard sale, had vintage magazines stacked up and waiting, until one day it just hit!

SKIP MY MEDS TODAY humorous sign

Like a lot of eco-friendly crafters she “loves the challenge of finding new incarnations for unwanted materials.”  She does a fantastic job with this! I especially love her cell phone cases that utilize scrap pieces of leather in combination with her Sassy Sayings images.

EXTREME PRINCESS COMPLEX cellphone case

Karin relates green crafting to a moment that struck her on a trip to Ireland. As she was looking out the window of the airplane she noticed the patchwork of “40 shades of green,” what the Irish call their country. She “tends to feel there are 40 shades of green in eco-friendly living and whether we call it recycling, reusing, upcycling, or living green it will always be with us in one form or another. More people must come to learn its importance, however.”  I could not agree more and I thank Karin for doing her part in bringing green crafting and its importance to the masses.

You can find Karin’s work in her Green Gypsies etsy shop.

[All images courtesy of Green Gypsies. Used with permission.]

3 thoughts on “Green Crafter Profile: Green Gypsies”

  1. I just discovered Karin and her art and am going nuts thinking of all my friends who would love the Sassy Sayings. Enjoyed learning more about her in the interview.

    Barbara
    San Jose, CA

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