Marking Your Plants - the Upcycled Way!

I came across a bunch of really cute upcycled garden markers on Upcycle Magazines website the other day.  There are 8 adorable ideas for marking those vegetable/flower/herb gardens without buying a thing.  I have another to add to their list and I'm going to show you how to use old soda cans and sharpies to make some really cute garden markers.  You can get really creative if you like or you can keep it simple.  Here's what you'll need:

1.  Some clean soda cans that you have cut the tops and bottoms from - be careful the edges are sharp!

2.  Something to cut with - keep it simple with a pair of scissors or get fancy with die cutting/embossing instruments meant for scrapbooking.

3.  Something to write with - a sharpie will do just fine but so will other markers and inks made for slick surfaces

Now that you have all your supplies gathered you can start cutting up your sheets of aluminum into the shapes you desire.  Keep it simple using your scissors to cut out simple stake-like tags.  Or you can pull your die cutting machine and let it do the cutting for you.  I even added some embossing to a few of mine. You'll probably need to flatten the aluminum which can be done easily by rubbing it lightly along the edge of a table. I find it easier to flatten after I cut the shape rather than trying to do the full sheet at once.  You're likely to make unsightly creases if you do it first.

Well, that was easy wasn't it?  Time to label your markers:

Add some simple wire or skewers that will easily hold your marker in the ground, like this:

And now to the garden:

What materials do you reuse to mark your gardens?  Leave a comment below and share your ideas.

An Upcycled Herb Garden... Anywhere

This is my favorite time of the year!  If I could be in the garden all day, I would be.  I've added two flower gardens to my yard, decked out the patio and have quite the vegetable garden growing in the field behind the house.  There's not a lot of room left to do much more, but I found a way and thought I'd share it with readers.   Yep, that's it over there on the left side of the page.  I love how rustic it looks and that I can put it anywhere.

Here's what you'll need:
* Soup cans (cleaned and labels/glue removed)
* Spray paint
* Chalk board paint (and chalk)
* Paint brush
* Twine (optional)
* Drill

First things first, drill two holes in the bottom of each soup can for drainage

And one just under the rim for attaching your twine should you choose to hang your herbs (optional):

Now spray paint your cans with the color of your choosing:

Once your cans are dry add a strip of chalkboard paint, you'll probably need two coats:

Add your plants:

Use a piece of chalk to label your herb:

You can stop here and decorate your patio or window ledge with individual herb pots or you can string a piece of twine through each can and tie it off.  You'll want each piece to be a little longer than the one before it so they form a tiered effect once hung. Then just tie all of the lengths together forming a loop that can be hung from anywhere you please. You can also use these in the office or the kids playroom to store pens, markers, paint brushes, etc.

If you make a soup can herb garden, I'd love to see it.  Post a link below so we can all check it out.  Happy gardening!

Ten Other Uses for Cardboard Paper Tubes

Before you toss those toilet paper and paper towel cores in the recycle bin, how about finding another use or two for them?  You can always toss them in the bin later.

1.  Art, kids or otherwise.  This framed flower is made completely of sliced, shaped  and partially painted cardboard tubes.

2.  Use them to organize, wrap and store scraps of ribbon. 

3.  Decorate them and seal one end for a fun upcycled storage idea (see my Upcycled Craft Closet post).

4. They are great way to add a "handle" to hallow items for ease of spray painting.  Then you can leave it to dry on the tube.

5.  Use them to start your seedlings; simply cut them in half and place them on an old baking sheet, fill with soil and drop in your seeds.

6.  Slice them up and decorate them with fabric, buttons or silk flowers to use as napkin rings.

7.  Paint them, sprinkle with glitter, add a layer of decoupage and turn them into earrings.

8.  Turn them into a toy for your small parrot, rabbit or rat.  They'll love to tear them up, toss them around and hide in them.

9.  Decorate them, close up the ends, add a ribbon and use them as a unique, personalized way to present small gifts.

10. Let the kids color and decorate them, glue two together, add a string and viola...binoculars.  Now take those binoculars and the kids outside and do some bird watching!

I'd love to hear your ideas for reusing cardboard tubes below.  Leave a comment and help us all reduce such a common household waste item.

More to do with Magazines: How to Make a Wallet

There are lots of similar tutorials out there for homemade wallets that divert magazine pages from the recycle bin that use packing tape as a laminating agent.  I wanted to find a way to make them so that you didn't have to deal with the seams that are created from the strips of packing tape.  I also wanted to soften them up a bit.  Well, I found a way!  With both Mother's and Father's Day coming up, I hope you'll find it easy enough for the kids to get involved too, they will need a little assistance though!

Start by gathering up some supplies.  Pick some of your favorite pictures from magazines that you already have laying around the house.  It could be from a gardening, hobby, fashion or celebrity magazine.  Just find something that you (or the person you're making it for) love. You'll also need a roll of clear contact paper and something to cut with.  I use a rotary cutter and straight edge but scissors are fine too. And finally, you'll use a sewing machine to stitch up the sides.

Start by trimming the rough edge of your magazine page.  Before you begin laminating, you'll want to make sure your page is the right size for your wallet.  Begin by folding the "wrong side" of your wallet together leaving the bottom edge slightly lower than the top, like this:

Then fold the bottom edge up one more time.  This will form the pocket that will hold your cards so you're only going to fold it as far as necessary, but not too far or you'll have to dig to get your cards out.  Use a card as a guide, it should look like this:

Now cut off 12 inches from your roll of contact paper.  You'll want to make sure to remove the backing carefully, lay the sheet out as flat as possible as you peel.  It's very easy to make unsightly creases in the contact paper if it folds up during the peeling process.  Okay, lay your contact paper out in front of you with the sticky side up.  Like so:

As you can see, I got a crease.  Adjust the laminate, so creases are closest to you as they will be on the inside of the wallet and likely hidden in the folding process. Now grab your magazine page and carefully place it wrong side up on the laminate.  Where you place it is not all that important, you just want to make sure that you leave a margin all the way around, like so:

Then you'll make some cuts to make folding the laminate easier.  So you'll make a cut from the magazine page to the bottom of the laminate.  You'll start your cut approximately 1/2" in from the edge of the magazine page:

Repeat on all four corners:

Fold your two shorter edges up on the page as shown below.  I find it easiest to work on making sure my crease folds nice and straight before pressing the remaining laminate into place.  But making adjustments with contact paper is definitely easier than making them with packing tape!

Now cut off the four excess rectangles of contact paper, but save them as you will use them later:

Now fold the two remaining sides inward:

Once your margins are folded in, you'll have some exposed magazine paper in the center of the page.  Use your excess strips to cover them.  Don't worry about how it looks, it'll be on the inside but you want to be sure it's all covered to protect the wallet.

Now you can fold it all back up and bring it to your sewing machine.  Simple stitch down each side and your wallet is complete!

To finish it up, fold the wallet in half and tie a rubber band around it for a couple of days to help it keep it's shape.  I make a bunch at a time and usually only have to keep them in a band for about a day:

If you're feeling adventurous you can chop up a page or more and laminate the pieces separately then sew them all together instead of the folding.  You can make more pockets that way and the pictures and words on the inside don't have to be upside down.  I have both types in my Etsy shop.

If you try this method, let me know how it goes below.  Did you do anything different?  Either way, get creative and have fun with it!

Spring is Here and I've been AWOL!

I know, I know it's not fair to rub it in!  While some parts of the country experienced snow last week, I've been working in the garden for a month now.  The weather in the South has turned my yard into a little slice of heaven and I have been taking full advantage of it!  Which means that sitting inside behind a computer just doesn't happen more than absolutely necessary.  Now that the gardens are growing and the deck is spruced up, I'll be taking my laptop out to enjoy the fresh air while I blog.  So, yes, you'll be hearing more from me!

I thought a giveaway might be a nice way to get things started....ya know get the typing fingers warmed up! So here's the giveaway prize:

After some spring cleaning, I had to do something with the mounds of discs that I had. There were way too many (DOZENS!) and quite frankly most I hadn't looked at in years.  That's how this fully functional hanging wall clock was born.  If purple is not your color check out the pics in my Etsy shop for other color options.

So, how can you win one of your very own?  Just leave a separate comment for each of the simple tasks listed below and you'll be entered once for each one that you complete.  And on Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 9:00 pm EST I'll use a random number generator to determine the winner.  Be sure to leave a way to contact you if you're the winner (your blog, your etsy store, twitter name, your email, etc):

1.  Become a Follower of this blog
2.  Tweet this blog post (be sure to leave your twitter alias)
3.  Become a fan on Facebook (already a fan?  That counts, just leave a comment)

While your in my shop checking out other clock color options, check out my magazine wallets.  My next blog will show you how to turn your colorful old magazines into a stylish wallet!  Until then...

Recycle it, Upcycle it, Freecycle it!

A couple weeks back I shared a link with readers on the Upcycled Stuff Facebook fan page for an organization called Freecycle.  It was a brief encouragement to consider donating some of the things that you might be tossing out during your spring cleaning to someone else who might be able to use it.  Well, I had a really interesting Freecycle moment this week that made me think this whole Freecycle movement might be blogworthy.

My latest Freecycle ask

Freecycle is an amazing community of people across the country who form smaller community groups to share their unwanted goods and find things that they need.  It is a grassroots effort to share perfectly good stuff within a community and keep it out of the landfill.  It's completely free and each community has local volunteer moderators.

Made from an olive jar

This week on my local Freecycle there are people offering up children's clothes, "well loved" furniture, a french drainpipe still in the box (that they found stuck in the tallest parts of a tree after recent windstorms), and much more.  On the other side, people were looking for fans and air conditioning units, moving boxes, a push mower and lots more.  It's true you need to be careful and realize that there are some people who will go ad to ad and take everything they can get their hands on and have a yard sale or put it on craigslist.  It is a bit disheartening when you see people from abuse shelters asking for donations for the families they serve and then you have takers who are just trying to make a buck.  I just try to remember, it's not going into the landfill.  But I digress.

This takes us to my Freecycle moment.  I put up an ask early this week for people's trash. Yup, you don't see too much of that but that's all I ever ask for.  This time it was for aluminum cans and glass food jars for a project I'm working on. As typically happens, I got a lot of responses asking what on earth I'm going to do with it all. I've sprinkled some of the pics of my projects throughout this post.

Go Clemson Tigers!

One of the women, Debbie, who responded to my plea didn't have the items I requested but told me she'd be happy to collect them for me as she used them.  We started chatting and one thing led to another and I ended up collecting a TON of packing materials from her.  She had just moved and was happy to pass on some small boxes and padding for shipping.  Here's the story I love!  The packing paper that I collected from her originated in Puerto Rico when another freecycler moved from there to Florida.  It was passed on to Debbie for it's most recent move from Florida to South Carolina.  Now I will use it to ship product all over the country.  Hopefully, the folks on the receiving end will find some great use for it in a craft project or their own shipping needs. To top it all off, I think there may be a great friendship in the making!  You see Debbie owned her own craft store when she lived in Florida and we had a lot to talk about.

Cute project in progress

That is my Freecycle story and I hope you will give it a chance. Pay it forward and keep it from the landfill!

Got Envelopes?

Whether you are among the rare breed who still loves to write letters or you're more like me and search frantically for an envelope to mail that once a month bill that you can't pay online, I have the perfect upcycled solution for you!  Origami envelopes made from old magazine pages are an artsy, economical and fun solution to your mailing needs.  Below are two different styles of envelopes that I use to tuck many of my upcycled jewelry pieces in before mailing them out.

And, yes, you can put these directly in the mail for things like letters and cards.  All you need is a label and a stamp and it's ready to mail...you'll probably want to slap on some tape to make sure it stays closed.  I'll give you the best step by step tutorial that a still camera will allow for a very simple upcycled envelope.  But you can find many video tutorials if you search the web.

Start by flipping through your favorite magazines and tear out a page that appeals to you.  Cut the page into a square, the size doesn't matter as long as it is an exact square.   The size of the finished envelope will be approximately half the size of the square you start with.

Take your square and make two diagonal folds.  Reopen the paper, your two folds should form an X and the exact center of the page will be marked by the intersection of those two lines.

 


 Next, fold in two corners to the center point, like this:

Unfold one of the flaps, keeping the other folded.  Refold along the center fold.  You can start to see your envelope take shape.

Now this is the only part where you can "eyeball it."  You're going to form your sides.  When you fold your sides in, keep in mind that one side will be tucked under the other and you don't want to fold the point back on itself.  Just try to keep the sides folded in the same distance.

Take the top flap and fold it back on itself .  The place that you fold it should match the central fold on the envelope beneath the flap. 

Then stand that point up at a 90 degree angle and open up the triangle.

While holding the triangle open, place your finger on the folded end and squash it down to form a diamond shape.

Now just  fold down the top flap along the previously made fold line.  Run your finger over all of your fold lines a couple of times to make sure everything is crisp.  Then just tuck in your flap and ....

Viola!  Now stop reading this blog and go write some letters.