Arts and Crafts - An upcycled white board

I've been in a crafty mood, so after seeing an article on 35 DIY projects from iVillage, I had to try one out. I settled on PapernStitch's Double-Duty Dry Erase Board. I've been wanting a dry-erase board for my apartment, but I have been hesitating purchasing one. When I saw this, a light bulb went off.

I had friends who bought mirrored closet doors in high school, just to use them as gigantic message boards. I already had a frame, and having a fabriholic mother, I had plenty of fabric scraps from which to choose. I went to work!

While I followed PapernStitch's tutorial for the most part, instead of using tape, I stitched in a large zig-zag across the back with thread. This is usually how you secure fabric over a board, so I just improvised it. Then I stitched down the corners with a whip stitch to stop them from poking up.

Viola! Awesome, pretty much free, and completely upcycled white board. It's also pretty cute when I hang it on the wall.

I've used one as a way to break up my shopping list. What I need from each store goes under the heading, thus making it quite easy for me to find out what I can grab while I'm in the area. I can write reminders on it so I do not walk out of the house without something important (like my lunch; scarf; or head, should I forget to attach it in the morning). It's also keeping me abreast of important events and recording some long-term to-dos, like finally photographing my apartment for family. The best part is, it adds some color and decor to my otherwise-bland kitchen. Huzzah!

Got an upcycling DIY? Let me know in the comments.

Reduce, Reuse!

Last week was recycle, and by sheer chance this week is reduce and reuse.

I have a lovely pair of boots, super warm and waterproof. I'll be needing them a lot this winter as I face SNOW for the first winter ever. The zippers have always been choosy, and when I was sewing the teeth of the zipper down, I managed to snap the zipper pull in half along the body. BAM! Expensive pair of boots now non-functional.

I'm moving to a town where biking is more feasible than driving a car. I definitely need a bike, but how to get one on a student's budget?

This, my darling readers, is where the other two, oft-neglected R's come into play. We're all good about recycling, but many of us (including me) forget to reduce our waste and reuse what we can.

I took my boots to a cobbler. It sounds old-fashioned, but for $12 I was able to get the boot back into perfect working order. $12 sounds like a lot for a zipper pull, but compared to $80 for new boots it's a steal. Reduced my need for new items? Check.

In hunting through the remnants of my grandmother's garage contents, I found a lovely bike. Problem: the bike is probably twice my age, has a chain that's rusted solid, and the back brakes aren't terribly responsive. A reuse is in the works. I don't know much about bikes, so I took it to pros and had them tune it. Not only were they absolutely entranced by a bike with little levers for shifters, they brought it up to working order. Also steep price for a student like me: $110 after labor. It's still cheaper than a few hundred for a new bike, though. Now that I have a clue what's going on and know the bike isn't going to fall apart, I can do my own maintenance. I wanted to have it professionally checked the first time, though, to make sure there wasn't any major issue that could be dangerous. What I did find out - it's a steel frame bike and apparently pretty darn tough, better than what I could buy in a store. That's a definite plus!

There you have it: for around a fifth of the price of replacing, I reduced waste and reused what I found. If you haven't ever tried a classic repair place, give it a shot. It'll be cheaper than buying new, and the planet will definitely thank you for the effort.

Oh, and you won't mind a proud newbie gardnerer bragging a bit, right?

Celebrate Independence (And go plastic-bag free)

Happy (early) Independence Day to all my fellow American readers!

Just in time for 4th of July, the Mother Nature Network invites us all to celebrate plastic bag independence on July 3rd. In celebration of this, I'm featuring cool non-plastic bag options.

Hand carry wrap

Of course, there's always my favorite furoshikis. I use a hand carry bag wrap for just about everything! It's especially good for groceries since you can hang the two separate handles on the metal hooks for plastic bags and it will keep its shape during loading.

The only thing the hand wrap isn't good with is books. I use the large object wrap with a smaller furoshiki than needed for "large objects" if I have a lot of books, or the two books wrap for some novelty fun.

Large object wrap and a summer read

One thing I've learned over the last few months about furoshiki: try to tie as much as you can in advance. For example, the hand carry wrap can be basically tied in advance, rolled tightly, and popped into your purse or bag. I use an old, stretched out hair tie to keep it together. The large object wrap can have its diagonal corners tied beforehand, or while you're standing in line. When you're ready to pack, slip the books into the loop, then quickly tie the third step and walk out happy.

Do you have no reusable bags, but some unused fabric? My favorite crafting blog, How About Orange, has a list of tote bag tutorials to help you upcycle your fabric into something pretty and useful.

Ever stuck without a laptop bag? Howcast has a way to turn a hoodie into a laptop bag in quite a clever way.

So, my darling readers, are you inspired to shun plastic bags for a day? If you are, leave your favorite "go green" tip in the comments, and one at random will win a furoshiki! It's upcycled (which means my grandmother dumped a lot of her old scarves on me) so I can't comment on the color. It's going to be a patriotic red and blue camouflage! The winner will be announced in two weeks.

Please, US residents only for the competition. Your comment must be posted by Friday, July 8th to be eligible.

Go forth and celebrate! 

A Newbie Goes Thrift Shopping

(Somehow, this keeps posting early. I'm giving in and letting it be instead of fighting to delete and repost it. Enjoy!)

While I've been a thrift shop lover for many years now, I found out a friend of mine had never even been inside one. I was in need of a thrift-shopping afternoon to find some long-sleeve shirts anyway and my friend, an urban Jane, needed some jeans and sweaters, so we scheduled a trip.

Urban Jane had her doubts about thrift stores. As she put it, "I thought there would be a lot more clothing with 'questionable stains'." She was expecting what most people believe about thrift stores: that they're crowded, low quality, and not really useful as far as clothing goes.

There is a thrift store near my home which boasts a gigantic clothing selection. Quite literally, this place is the size of a grocery store. We spent a total of $50 between us, and this was the result:

Three pairs of pants, five shirts, one leather jacket, and two cardigans.

Urban Jane's reaction was what made the trip worth it!

Her words: "I didn't realize that I could find [name brand] jeans there. I know people who would love to pay $5-10 for their jeans. I buy cheap jeans for $20, and I know people who easily spend $80 on a single pair. "

On quality: "The jeans aren't exactly new, but I like that. They're already broken in, so I know that if they fit, they will continue fitting."

The best compliment: "I wish I'd known about this all through college. It's great!"

So, the tips of the day:
1) Select clothes by starting by type you want, narrowing by color, then style, then fit, then price. If it survives all these levels, it's something you definitely want to consider.
2)If you don't have a skirt to let you try on jeans (just shrug them on under a very loose skirt), snag one from the racks and use it. This is particularly important if your thrift store has no changing room to prevent theft.
3)Value of a piece is based on how much you like it and how much you'll use it. Only you can decide it. However, bringing a friend to tell you how it fits is definitely a nice thing.
4)A camera lets you see how you look if there's no mirror.
5)Splurge a little if you see something you absolutely love. It probably won't be there when you return.

Where do you all thrift shop? If you haven't gone, why?  

Recycle-Chic

Recycle Posters - What Can Be Recycled and What You Can Recycle at Home - The Daily Green

I know that trying to remember what you can recycle is really a pain. My university has hammered it in to our heads with the three bin system - recyclable, compostable, and please, dear heavens, don't use it. They even use reusable or compostable plates in the dining halls!

For home use, artist Fee Harding (AKA Burntfeather) has put together a series of rather hipster art posters breaking down trash into the recyclable components. If this is your style, feel free to download. My only complaint - they use a lot of black ink!

 I know that my neighborhood takes all plastics, so I don't need to sort.How do you make your recycling easy to tell?

The New Bread Machine

Also known as a story of community environmentalism.

My bread machine broke several months ago. The pan wasn't holding liquid and that is a definite problem if you actually want to make bread. I love homemade bread, so I make the dough in the machine and then roll it into loaf pans so it's the right size for sandwiches and the like. Bread pans never make them the right size.

Anyway, my darling machine was broken, and buying a new pan was nearly the cost of a new machine, even through eBay. So I put out a request on the webgroup Freecycle for my local areas. Freecycle (and the new site EcoBees, though I haven't tried it) let you both offer and ask for free items through the internet. The quality of the items is hit and miss, but you can often find some nice things there. Mom and I have gotten a nice wood cutting board and a good-condition grill, and we've sent off some old programming books and Magic: The Gathering cards. It's fairly eclectic, but it can work.

So out went this request, and within a few hours we get a message that says "Oh, if only you'd asked sooner! I just donated my old machine to a thrift shop on [these two streets]." Off runs my madre, and luckily the machine had just hit shelves. Now we have a new-to-us bread machine that actually makes bread. The thrift store gets some money to help their charity, too. Next time there's an e-recycling event, I may pass on my base, or I might try to Freecycle it back.

Key points here: community and communication. By keeping in contact with complete strangers, I was able to score a decent bread machine. I didn't have to buy anything new, and she didn't have to throw anything out. This is how community reusing works!

Have you had a Freecycle experience, or something similar? Yahoo! Green has a great list of ways to encourage community reuse.

Shoe Shine

I'm a huge fan of white shoes. I think they're great, and forget the people who say no white after Labor Day. I live in a sunny part of the country, and I will wear white when white looks good.

The problem with white shoes, however, is that they are white. White shows every particle of dust, dirt, and smudge which comes within half a mile of them. I pulled out a pair of my white heels for 4th of July a few weeks ago and realized they were a mess. I've been reading a book about cleaning with basic, natural products ("Zen Cleansing" by De Jong, a review will be forthcoming). De Jong recommends using baking soda to get shoe scuffs off floors. I started wondering if it could also get floor scuffs off shoes.

You can see the results! The top one is representative of the shoes pre-cleaning, and the bottom, post scrub. All I did was dip a damp cloth in baking soda and polish in a circular motion. Then I wiped them to get off the excess baking soda. The shoes look like new, except for a few places where the covering itself had torn.

This is great news if you're thrift-shopping and need to give your purchases a little TLC, or if you have some shoes which need cleaning. Water cleaning didn't do much when I tried it, but baking soda is slightly abrasive, so it does a nice job in taking out dirt without much effort on my part.

The best part is that baking soda is non-toxic and naturally occurring, so it won't pollute the wastewater. It's also a deodorizer, so it refreshes the sent, too. It gives the shoes some extra use-life by not making them look old and worn.

Got favorite clothing refreshing tips? Let me know in the comments.