Weekly Top 10 for June 20, 2007

This week’s subject is: the best recycled materials for craft projects.

What I’ve found looking around, what I’ve wondered about using myself, what catches my fancy or makes me laugh, what I’m thinking of using myself. This stuff is the fun stuff.

10. Wine Corks! I have a large collection myself that I have yet to do something with, and I have lately found that you can purchase more online should you have the urge to make a bulletin board or coasters or a chair.

9. This was new. I hadn’t thought about making things out of brass keys before. I have no ideas about what to do with them, though.

8. If you can still find them, old record jackets are great for decorating things. The art is big, they have all sorts of topics on ‘em, and oh the possibilities for evocative memories.

7. Cheap, used glassware is easily accessible and fun! - first breaking it apart and then putting it back together again as part of a collage or something else. I once had a friend who really loved the breaking apart process. I understand some of it can also be remelted, but that’s way beyond me!

6. Can’t forget the industrial - there must be a million uses for scrap metal. Not that all of us know how to work with it, but if you can, consider scrap metal instruments or this book looks promising.

5. Terra cotta shards. A long time ago I learned from my mom that there must always be broken terra cotta pots around. So surely they can be used for something other than lining the bottoms of new plants? A mosaic, or perhaps a larger painted shard as a candle holder? Hmmm…

4. Im a big fan of making soap from scratch - lye, oils, etc. But in fact you can take that little scrap of lavendar soap you have left from the gourmet bar and turn it into something else, as illustrated in this lovely article the subject.

3. Jeans. Jeans are one of my favorite material because the fabric is tough and the color is blue. Rugs, bags, more clothing, more sewing, more crocheting - it’s very versatile. This bag is one of my favorites, but that’s tame. Check out In a minute ago’s 65 Things You Can Do With Denim.

2. The most classic example of a recycled material used for crafts is empty food cans, jars and bottles. The throwaways of the kitchen are staples of doing recycled crafting with kids. I still have examples from my childhood. But in adulthood they make great, creative storage containers in addition to many other things. I just saw an episode of Design Remix on HGTV that made a chandelier out of cans. A guest punched out the word peace in Arabic to shine out through the can.

1. The absolute best is this Dukes of Hazzard vintage bedsheet. So cheesy! So retro! Maybe it’s me, but for a girl raised in the South in the 80s, it just doesn’t get better than this. Unless, of course, you can find me an A-Team bedsheet.

Manhattan Craft

I lived in Manhattan until about a year ago and was unaware at the time of the awesome craft scene that was going on there. Gosh I would love to visit Etsy Labs. Check out this link, which has an actual map of a few different places in the crafty scene in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Of course, I was in grad school at the time and not able to either participate in crafts or enjoy them. But it’s nice and cool to know that they are there.

The beginning of crafting

Having a new blog about my crafting sidelines inspires me to talk a little about how my adventures in crafting began. Crafting, to me, implies experimentation, so my mind thinks back to my Cabbage Patch Kid and my 10-year-old self making little doll clothes. My mom had this huge box of leftover fabric from her many years of sewing clothes for herself - thinking back it was a big box of all seventies fabric I wish I still had! What a stash that would be now!

The one I particularly remember is a skirt and sleeveless top in red, white and blue striped and textured fabric one summer. It was nearly the 4th of July and I didn’t know how to sew. I made huge stitches and it had ragged edges, but it worked. Despite this inventiveness and exploration, my mom was not inspired to teach me to sew. Sewing was not her favorite thing because she had once had to do it out of necessity, not fun or creativity. She had moved on to other things in my childhood.

So it was really much later when I was in college that I finally learned how taught myself to sew. I once bought an inexpensive chair (like the Poang but cheap) at IKEA with no real cushion cover, and I also bought a piece of striped fabric that was on sale. I made what was, essentially, a 5′ long bag to cover the chair cushion. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it more than got the job done. I had some fabric left over and made a cushion as well, and stuffed it. The curious thing about those projects was the hand sewing - I had no machine, so every stitch was hand-placed chain stitch.

That was 1994, and I still have that cushion. It’s faded now, and the stuffing isn’t quite as fluffy as it once was, but it’s been reborn as my dog’s favorite place to sleep! (See little sleeping Audrey above.) My efforts paid off in another way as well! My grandmother - the expert seamstress of 70 years’ experience, the woman who’s made a little of everything (perfectly) on her sewing machine - heard about my painstaking efforts and bought me a Singer sewing machine.

That was then, this is now, many projects later. Crafting is awesome.