Showing posts with label eco-friendly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eco-friendly. Show all posts

25.1.10

how to reuse your bath 'pouf'




isn't this clever? it caught my eye because a most recent bath puff only lasted a couple of months at ours, and that was after already fixing it with an elastic band on its 2nd week of life. maybe we are just really hard on our poufs? i don't know. anyways, salihan crafts has a little tutorial for 2 ways of reusing your pouf. the above image is of a knitted pot scrubber, but i think it would work equally well in the shower as a plain old body scrubber.

my thoughts lately have been on how to not buy too many new things. i was talking to fellow craft blogger kat about a blog she reads (note to self: must find out what blog it is she is actually referring to) about a woman who made a pledge not to buy ANYTHING new for an entire year! she could go to op-shops and she could buy some new things but they had to be ethical/sustainable/sweatshop free etc. it really got me thinking about how quickly i tend to rush out on a crafty whim and purchase things to make things with. it is so hard sometimes to be patient and wait until you can find the buttons in a thrift shop or consignment shop, or order and wait for ethically produced fabric to arrive in the mail. being mindful about where and why you are purchasing something takes a little more time and effort, but is so much better for both your budget and your ecological foot-print. and i definitely always feel better about things i've done that require a bit of an effort, don't you?

we did do something good over the weekend, which involved sewing new velcro on a pair of board shorts that were in good condition apart from the velcro bits, and we were quite happy with ourselves for doing that. it is so satisfying to salvage things, and definitely worth the extra time and effort.


ps: Down to Earth posted today about the hierarchy of food waste, and i can't seem to get enough of her thoughts, so for further reading see here.

20.1.10

making plans. . .



the reason for all these shenanigans with a light box is that i'm getting my act together to
open an etsy shop. as soon as I can! it's going to be called 'la fabrica', which means 'the workshop' in spanish. i'm just waiting (rather impatiently) for a few supplies I've ordered to arrive from the states. but look at what arrived the other day...



. . .these beautiful pieces of 100% wool felt in gorgeous colours came from feltonthefly on etsy. thank you Janet! and look at how beautiful her packaging is - something you don't see from commercial sellers.

i am actually a little reticent about cutting into it! the colours are s beautiful and the felt is SO nice to the touch. infinitely nicer than the acrylic felt from the craft shop. i'm also waiting for some 'ecospun' felt to arrive in the mail from feltorama, which is made from 100% recycled plastic bottles. i'm excited to see what this material is like to work with as i want to keep my made things as eco-friendly etc. as possible by using renewable, reused, and thrifted components. there are some great op-shops around our place and a funny little haberdashery with unused old-stock trims, buttons, zips etc. something about having a look around for bits and pieces sort of satisfies the hunter gatherer in me and makes pieces more special.




so to celebrate, i used some scraps of my old icky felt to make this miniature bunting flag. it looks cute, i think. one could go on a bit of a mini bunting binge and fix them onto windows, across wardrobes and along corkboards. it took just minutes to baste the triangles onto some thread. . .