Hand Knitted Pillow Cushion, Zero Waste Pillow, Eco Friendly, Couch Cushion, Global Textile by StarHomeStudio
Flower art print, macro photography, floral abstract art flower stamens, wall art picture by PhotographySpa
Autumn flower photography, Botanical decor, Nature photography, Rustic decor, Garden decor by AdamsJuliaPhoto
Nantasket Beach, Coastal Decor, Sunset Photography, Beach Cottage Decor, Fine Art Landscapes by JLMPHOTOGRAPHS
It has been a while since my last recycle post. Even though tin cans are not as harmful as plastic and they are easier to recycle, if they do end up in the landfill they take 50 years to decompose, that's a long time! And a lot of them end up there, much more than you want to imagine.
So here are some fun and pretty ways to recycle your cans. Colorful ones can be used directly as they are as flower pots.
You can cut them up and turn them in to amazing flowers, or buy them from this artist directly. Cutting tin is super easy with tin scissors, we have a pair and they are really easy to use.
Make clocks and other household stuff you normally buy and are often made of plastic, this is a great alternative and you can paint them in the exact color you want.
This is a super cute lampshade, which will give lovely shadows and is super strong.
If you don't want to mess with electricity, they are also great as candle holders, either standing or hanging as lanterns.
You can paint the cans and use them as plant pots, I like how the ones on the left look like trash but are also cool :)
You can use them in many ways to organize stuff, and personalize them with your own colors and use them for a large variety of things, even for wine bottles!
Flatten the cans and turn them in to amazing pieces of decoration, like this beautiful frame.
Attach larger cans to the wall for a different way of organizing, great for toys but also scarves, socks etc.
And a bonus, use them in your art to make a statement about the environment, or buy from an artist, like these amazing pieces of Stephanie Kilgast:
Christmas shopping time has begone! While it still seems far away, time flies and when you want something from overseas (like for example from one of ours shops *wink wink) it is better to start early to avoid late arrival stress.
To start the season I made this driftwood Christmas tree, all wood is found on the beach and the foot and steel stick going through the driftwood pieces are vintage so everything is eco friendly :) Available at StarHomeStudio.
And here are some great earth and financial friendly other ideas for Christmas:
Environment friendly packaging ideas with the sources from here and here
Toilet paper Christmas Calendar, you can find the tutorial here
And finally instead of watering trees for ages just to cut them down for a few weeks to enjoy I love alternatives, and if you have a small space this one is really great:
In our house no one drinks any alcoholic beverages so we never have any glass bottles in the house. We do however find some bottles on the beach, unfortunately they never have a note inside :)
These two bottles were both very cool and we took them home, the green one is the biggest wine bottle I have ever seen and the other one is a water bottle with a beautiful shape.
I've had this mini tutorial on my laptop for ages, and wanted to try it out for a while, yesterday I decided to go for it and luckily thought about taking pictures so I can show you my results :)
I put the nail polish remover in a glass jar, we always have nail polish remover in our home, not for its original purpose but for removing glued objects. If you want to remove something that has been glued, soaking it in this will do the trick and it will clean all glue residue off without harming the objects and without the need of force.
On the picture I could not really see what 'yarn' it was talking about, I decided on a natural hemp in the hope it would burn nicely.
It did not really burn though, I turned the bottle around several times in hope that it would be hot enough.
I then tried to put it in my huge bowl of water, but the bowl was too small so I eventually ran it under the tap and it broke off but with difficulty.
Resulting a not very pretty edge, I will sand it all off but it was not the result I was hoping for, the whole bowl incident cause for a delay of the quick cooling off.
For the second bottle I decided to use a thinner piece of hemp, in hope that it would burn easier.
It did exactly the same though but it got hotter easier, I think an easier burning yarn would have made it all easier but I do not have anymore bottles for now so maybe next time.
The cut however became pretty smooth, this time I did not loose any time with trying to stick the bottle in a bowl but went immediately to the tap and it cut off without any help or force.
I sanded the green bottle and had an instant vase, the black residue of the burning went off very easily. The white bottle will need some more work and I am planning on covering it with shells or something to loose the font on it.
I discovered this video this morning, this guy has done several experiments and shows the best way. I wish I had searched on Pinterest yesterday before starting, but it was a fun experiment so no harm done. And there are several much clearer tutorials too on Pinterest, I do not know why I did not check as I am on Pinterest every day :)
So besides the obvious that re-cycling sweaters and any other textile product is good instead of trowing them away, another thing to think about: 1 kilogram of cotton can take up to 20.000 liters of water to produce (2 lb 2.3 oz cotton = 5283 gallons of water)! You can read more about the impact of cotton on the WWF website. This is about the amount needed for a pair of jeans and a t-shirt!
So not only our food takes a lot of water to produce but also our clothes. Thus another good reason to recycle clothes, and if you are not handy you can always find people in need or places to donate the clothes you want to toss away, and make someone else very happy with the things you do not use anymore.
Our clothing shop and bag shop are both 95% made of recycled materials, which feels good and the pieces become unique. This bag has an upcycled sweater top, we had more but they all sold as they all turned out very cool :)
Make pet clothing and bedding out of old sweaters. We made a whole bunch of doggy sweaters as they are so expensive to buy, a win-win, great for our budget, warm doggies and recycled sweaters :) We made ours by cutting it according to Toffee's body but not all doggies will sit still like him so I found a few tutorials for you, here is one with good explanation and pictures, here is one made out of a sweater sleeve good for small doggies. I even found a tutorial on how to make a easy to make doggy (or kitty) bed out of a sweater.
Here some more ideas to recycle your sweaters:
Keep your hands warm and toasty with mittens or fingerless gloves, find instructions here for the fingerless ones and here for the mittens. And here is another cool mitten pattern.
Keep your feet warm with leg warmers (made of the arms), socks and slippers. If your sweater is 100% wool you can wash it warm in the machine first to get a nice thick felt for slippers. Here is one of many sock tutorials, and I love these slippers with a step by step explanation and these slippers are very cute :)
I'm sure you have seen them before, knitted pillows. Often very expensive in shops and can be made free from upcycled sweaters. How adorable is that monster pillow? If you have a kid you could even make it of their favorite but now too small sweater so that s/he can still keep it! And here a tutorial on how to make a simple one for a cozy couch look.
Cover some pencil holders and plant pots to cover up some ugly things or make baskets to hold your craft supplies and other things.
Cover your old chairs with a beautiful old sweater or make poufs with a sweater and filling (you could fill them with old rags for an entirely eco friendly project).
If you think that these are all cute and useful but you have a whole bunch of sweaters, how about a patchwork blanket, and they look super beautiful too! You can find a step by step tutorial here in case you have no idea where to begin with :)
And if you still think that upcycling is too shabby or so, check this post on Country Living with beautiful decorative projects looking very chic! You can cover vases, lamp caps, anything you want!
Once you have done your project(s) you will have a bunch of leftovers which are fun too, maybe these two will inspire you, adorable balls and mug cozies, and I'm sure your creative juices have started to flow, have fun and if you want to share your upcycling sweater project please share in the comments!
I limited my post with 9 ideas but there are many more like ear warmers, hats, bags, teapot cozies, you can get lots of ideas on Pinterest, you'll never throw away a sweater ever again!
See more recycle posts here, and more are coming up so stay tuned :)
And if you like this post, please share it on Pinterest!
For my second post on how to recycle daily garbage (first was how to recycle eggshells) I choose plastic bottles, no matter what we do we use lots of them and I found some small and big projects to re-use them. It takes hunderds of years for plastic bottles to decay so your projects will be usefull for many years.
I found some amazing planting / gardening uses for them, actually there are so many of them that I am only showing a few examples:
Cut a bottle in half to cover pots, this will protect newly sprouting plants against cold and snails, the damp inside the bottle will let the plant grow quicker.
Hang a whole bunch of bottles in front of a window, filled with soil and plants it will create a green curtain in your room, and the plants will get plenty of sunlight.
Make a bunch of holes in a plastic bottle, dig it in soil near vegetable or normal plants and create a slow watering system. Your roots will not rot and your plants won't dry out.
Create a self watering seed starter pot simply by cutting a bottle in half, again perfect to avoid that your seeds and roots won't rot while they won't dry out when you do not water them every day.
Now that we had a few garden related projects, I thought it was fun to show some creative projects, you will be amazed by what people have done with plastic bottles:
Make amazing flowers simply by cutting the plastic in flower shapes and heating them a little near a candle to make the petals curly. I also saw some amazing Christmas decorations during my search, even a Christmas tree entirely decorated with plastic and it looks fantastic! You can make smaller flowers, leaves and shapes to create jewelry.
Michelle Brand makes Chandeliers all with plastic bottles, and they do not look like 'trash' at all, they are amazing, and you could make them yourself, double win. I've also seen cool room screens and curtains made out of plastic bottles.
Make a cool jewelry organizer, I really like this one where you can storage any kind of jewelry, and there is a great tutorial for it.
There are also plenty ideas to use them as storage containers, like this cute and easy to make peg basket, these hanging baskets would be great for craft and hobby rooms and even book and magazine storage.
I have only scratched the surface but this will get your inspiration flowing I hope :)
As the last idea I'm showing a big one, which you might never do but it is too cool not to show.
You can make a greenhouse of bottles, it will have the same effect as glass only won't cost you a thing and hail and such are not such a threat as with a glass greenhouse. Here you can read what you would need (mostly handy hands and a huge amount of bottles), maybe a nice family project.
Have you ever done such a project, maybe something different you would like to share? I hope this will inspire you to not throw these away but making use of them :)
I have also read about several house projects built in Nigeria, and now also in some other countries. Some mentioned filled with sand but it can also be dry dirt. These filled bottles are 20 times stronger than bricks and are even said to be bullet proof! They become great isolated houses for not much money and for each one bedroom, living room and kitchen house 7800 bottles are used, so less trash and more roofs for people, such a great project!
They are also a good deterrent for slugs and snails. Scatter a generous barrier around any young seedlings that you want to protect, this is apparently the equivalent of us walking barefoot on broken glass.
Use egg shells as free seed starters. You can start your seeds in egg shells, which will provide them a nutrient rich place to grow and thrive. Simple take half of an egg shells, poke a small hole at the bottom, and fill it with soil. Add your seed or seedling and water as usual. You can then place the entire egg shell into the ground when the plant is stable for transplanting.
Make your own nutrient rich fertilizer. Plants, especially roses, love the nutrients that egg shells provide. Save your egg shells and when you have a handful of them, crush them into a fine powder. You can place them in a plastic baggie to do this easily and with little mess. Add the leftover coffee grounds from your morning brew and mix the two ingredients together well. Then, simply sprinkle the powder at the base of your plants and water as usual.
Abrasive Cleaner: Crush the shell and add to some soapy water to use on things like stainless steel sinks, pots, etc
Drain Clearer: Finely crushed shells will help keep your drain clear
Nourishing Face Mask. Pulverize dried egg shells with a mortar and pestle, then whisk the powder in with an egg white and use for a healthful, skin-tightening facial. Allow the face mask to dry before rinsing it off.
Make Your Own Powdered Calcium Supplement. Skip the pills and simply bake your shells at 180 Celsius (350 F degrees) for 8 minutes. Let them cool and grind them to a fine powder. Add your supplement (a teaspoon or less) to your favorite smoothie or juice once a day.
Use it as craft material. Egg shells are great to make beautiful mosaics , you can find a fun egg shell mosaic frame tutorial here.
Make eco friendly chalk for your kids, or yourself :) Here is a great tutorial for that.
I hope this post will inspire you to re use eggshells, and I am planning to write more posts on how to recycle daily used trash, in a mission to make it a habit for myself and others :)
If you know another way to recycle eggshells please let me know in the comments, I'd love to learn it!
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