DIY: Celebrate Earth day by sprouting your own seeds

Around this time of the year, kids get to learn a lot about recycling, planting and trash clean up in celebration of Earth day. I think it’s important to let them know we must do these things all year around and Earth should be celebrated every day.  So, it doesn’t matter if you do this project on Earth day, this week or next month as long  as your kids experience the joys and wonders of watching their own seedlings emerge. Plus, they’ll get a little lesson on recycling and composting on top of it all!

You will need:

* An empty egg carton (the molded pulp ones, not plastic or polystyrene)

* Potting soil

* Seeds

* Plastic wrap or bag

* Pen or pecil

* Tooth picks and paper to make labels

Tip: to make the germination process a breeze, pick seeds that germinate easily such as beans, pees, carrots, squash, cucumber and pumpkins. Hard to start seeds might not even sprout and you’ll end up having a frustrated kid!

Get started:

1. Separate the bottom part from the lid of the egg carton. Take the bottom part and poke holes in each cell using the tip of a pen or pencil.  Those will be the drainage holes. Place the lid of the egg carton under the bottom part, nesting one under the other. Now you have your seedling tray.

2. Place small amounts of soil in each cell and plant the seeds making sure the seeds are lightly covered by soil (follow package directions)

3. Water each cell. Be mindful not to over water the seeds, a spray bottle comes in handy.

4. Use tooth picks and paper to make labels. You can also use rocks or clothes pins to label the seeds.

5. Cover your tray with plastic wrap or a bag to create greenhouse conditions.

6. Place the tray by the window and watch your seeds grow! Keep soil watered and remove the plastic wrap when the first leaves appear.

7. When your plants have more than two leaves, separate each cell and plant it directly into the ground (or pot). The pulp that the egg carton is made of will decompose and become compost.

Doing this project is a great way to teach kids about the importance of planting and re-planting, recycling and composting. Explain to them why we should plant trees, how you are recycling the egg carton and how it becomes plant food. Let them have fun while you guide them. Make a photo journal, they’ll enjoy comparing the growth of the plants and making observations later on. I know I did when I was little and now I pass the experience on to my kids.

Natasha K.

*on Etsy*

*on Facebook*

What are B Corps? Why Do We Need Stuff?

In my last post, readers, I reflected on Earth Day and sustainable small businesses and our own businesses. It was a lot to read, kind of heavy, I know. Today is going to be a bit along those lines, but I'm going to share two big things, that combined, relate to sustainable small businesses.

Earth Day Reflecting

Happy day-after-Earth Day!

Two weeks ago, I had promised photos and a recap of the Etsy craft event on making terrariums, but I didn't make it. I had to rush home to dog walk. Yep. I was dog sitting that week and had to make sure the rascal was okay.

Needless to say, I missed the event, but heard many, many great things about it. I've even seen a few of the terrariums made that evening and am full of envy that I don't have my own to share with you.

Recycling Ideas On Pinterest

Readers, are you all clued in to the wonderful world of Pinterest? If you aren't, I highly recommend that you get an invitation and join. As with every online site, you should review the guidelines carefully and make sure you want to be part of the site. If you do, you'll see how it is a great tool for inspiration, marketing, business development, and creativity.

But I've digressed, of course! The reason I'm talking about Pinterest today is because I found an entire world of recycling ideas and crafts and it makes me so happy and I think it will for you, too!

Giving Your Holiday Cards A New Life

Happy New Year, Readers! I hope your Holidays were spectacular and that you've entered 2012 with feelings of excitement, determination, and peace.

The first week of January, I attempt to do some spring cleaning. I clean out my closets, shred old papers I no longer need, go through old magazines from 2011, and do an inventory of my business stock. I also file all of my receipts and get my books in order as I prepare for orders in the new year and tax season. In other words, I purge, breathe, and usher in something like order before the chaos begins.

Wrapping Your Holidays With Eco-Love

Good December, {NewNew} readers!

Last month, I promised you a blog with tips on how to eco-friendly decorate your home for the Holidays. I'm sorry to break the news to you, but I'm not writing about that this month. Instead, I'm sharing my favorite eco-friendly alternatives to gift wrap.

Yes, we are talking about decorating under the tree for your loved ones and the planet. I think it's a trade-off, but don't worry, you will get your tips for eco-friendly Holiday decorating. You can hold me to it!

Eco-Friendly and Natural Cleaning Recipes To Use In Your Home and Office

Just in time for the Holidays, when you may have more dirt around thanks to more-than-normal foot traffic, and closed windows keeping out the cold weather, I'm providing you with eco-friendly and natural cleaning recipes to use to keep your home and office clean and chemical free.  Some of you may already know these agents, or have them in your cupboard. If you don't, next time you're at the store pick them up!

On Being a Saver

As I've mentioned before, I'm a saver of things that might rightfully be considered trash and thrown away --- felt scraps, for example. But, per the felt scraps example, I save these things because of their potential to become something not-trash. I see their possibility for transformation. I know I'm not alone in this among crafty types.

Top Five List for Recycling

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

We hear those words evermore these days, not just for the sake of the environment, but also for the sake of our wallets.

I absolutely try to reuse anything and everything that is meant to be disposable.

And so here is my top five list for recycling items that you normally might just throw away: (In no particular order)

1. Empty cereal boxes, the kind that have an inner liner where the food is held. This is one of my favorites! What I like to do is carefully dis-assemble the box and re-assemble it inside out so that I have a box that I can either use for gift giving, shipping items in, or even just storage for small items. If you choose to use it as a shipment box, make sure you put a label over any writing that might be inside the box, otherwise that box is ready to be labeled and shipped.

2. If you don't already save them, the plastic container that your wonton soup arrived in would make an excellent storage container, and not just for food. They're great because they are see through and easily stacked.

3. Page-a-day desk calendars, the kind you rip off the comic or other with the day and probably crumple and toss. Not so fast! Collect those and use the non-printed side for scratch paper for your grocery list or other musing.

4. Lonesome sock, you know the kind, the one the dryer left lonely without a mate. Good news, our single sock now has a new life, as a dustrag, a puppet or sock monkey.

5. That pesky junk mail. Especially the kind with the envelopes for you to mail back applications and such. I use those envelopes to store receipts in, for different categories and write exactly what's in them.

What are some things that YOU give a second life to? Please share!

by Lorina Pellach-Ladrillono of http://www.beadscarf.com/ and http://beadscarf.etsy.com/

How-To: Making a Miniature Artist's Canvas

I have always been obsessed with creating miniature versions of the things I use in my everyday life. I think the extra focus required to make miniature objects imbues the tiny things I make with a special quality--as if they are more charged with meaning than they would be at their regular size. Another reason to spend your time making tiny stuff is that it doesn't take up a whole lot of space, which, if you have friends who live in small apartments and want to give them beautiful handmade things but don't want to burden them with a lot of clutter, is a very good thing!

This tutorial will teach you how to make dollhouse-sized blank artists' canvases from empty tissue, granola bar and cereal boxes, which you can then paint and add to friends' art collections. I am hoping I can spark a whole trendy miniature painting craze!

Here's what you will need:
-empty boxes made from thin cardboard that you otherwise would have tossed into the recycling
-muslin fabric
-white glue
-acrylic gesso
-a normal size brush for applying the gesso, plus teeny tiny ones for doing the actual painting
-acrylic paints
-a gridded acrylic ruler is helpful for making accurate right angles when cutting up your boxes

Step 1: Figure out what size you want your miniature canvas to be. You can just eyeball the size if you like, but if you want it to be the perfect size to fit into a dollhouse, you'll want to do a little math. The standard size for dollhouse accessories is 1/12 scale, which means that you want to divide all your regular measurements by 12. If the full-sized painting would be 18 by 24 inches, then you want to make your mini canvas 1 and 1/2 inches by 2 inches.

Step 2: Once you have cut your cardboard to size, spread it with a thin layer of white glue and stick it to a piece of muslin. Make sure that the sides of your canvas are parallel to the grain of the fabric.

Step 3: Fold the fabric around to the back of the canvas and glue it down.

Make sure the folded fabric edge is glued slightly inside the edges of the cardboard so it can't be seen from the front.

Step 4: When your glue has dried, paint your canvas with a thin layer of acrylic gesso. You want to make sure not to put the gesso on too thickly, because being able to see the grain of your muslin is crucial to having a miniature painting that looks like the full-sized version. If you want to have an especially texture-y canvas, try different types of fabric and see which one looks best.

Paint gesso on the edges & back as well.

That's it! These miniature canvases are so easy and fun to make that you can create hundreds of them in nearly no time, then invite some friends over to have a painting party.

Then you and your friends can have a miniature art show:

Stella (lookcloselypress)

Drawing the Curtain on Winter

I have a friend who I would consider to be my wardrobe refashion-enabler. Over the years I have gotten tons of “hand-me-downs” from her that often need just a little tweaking to be wearable. Sometimes she just provides the raw materials. This is one of those instances. She gave me a pretty flowered curtain that I’ve had lying about for a while as I waited for inspiration to strike. Spring is just starting to appear here in New York, so I thought that it might be time to cut into the lovely yellow and orange flowers. Now, normally I am a pattern-follower, but I thought that I would try a little improvisation on this project.

First I cut off the hem and the hanging sleeve. The fabric has a directional pattern so I folded the curtain in half, cut along the fold and rotated one layer so that the flowers were all headed in one direction.


I chose a basic a-line skirt that I like and used it as a very basic pattern. I lay the skirt on top of the fabric and cut around it, keeping the bottom quite wide so that the skirt would have more of a flare (surely all flowery skirts should be the swing-y kind).



Then I sewed up the two sides—adding a short zipper to the left side-seam—and tried the skirt on in order to improvised some darts. Voila!

It was done, but it was little boring.

It needed a little more zing and I apparently needed a little more of a challenge (it is wardrobe refashion challenge, after all.) I had a fair amount of fabric left over so I thought I would turn this from a simple a-line skirt to a slightly-less-simple gored skirt. I tried the skirt on again and decided where the gores should go. I folded the skirt in half with the side seams together and measured and marked a straight line parallel to the folds (the center front and back).





I then took a deep breath and cut long slits along these lines. Then I cut four triangular pieces of fabric from my scraps that were the same length as these slits in the skirt. I initially tried to insert the gores using lapped seams (these come up a lot in the vintage patterns that I like to use) but something about this technique made them look flat and I wanted a bouncy, swishy skirt. So I ripped out the seams and tried again by reinforcing the top of the slit with a little stay-stitching and then pinning and sewing the gores in one side at a time. I liked this result much more. It gives the gores a little more of a three-dimensional effect.

I am finally happy with the skirt though it still needs a proper hem and waistband (probably in some contrasty color) and I am waiting anxiously for spring to really arrive so that I may wear it out!






Tanya Luck(x4)

Cabin Fever Project #2: The T-Shirt Book Cover

by Lorina of The Original Beadscarf

Everytime my mother-in-law goes somewhere on vacation, she has this almost primal need to buy my husband and myself t-shirts emblazoned with the place she has just returned from. Now while it's very endearing of her to think of us, and I do graciously accept it, I never, ever wear them. However, I do tuck it away so that I might give those shirts a second life someday.

And so here's a nifty little project for you to try out, when you don't want to go out, when it's cold out. It's a take on the paper book cover that we were forced as kids to cover all our books with.

The T-Shirt Book Cover

You'll need:

t-shirt (preferably one with an interesting pattern, you can also try concert T's!)
book (that you want to cover)
good pair of scissors
tailor's chalk/pencil
tape measure
straight pins
needle and thread, (preferably a sewing machine)

How to:

1. Place your t-shirt on a flat surface and your book (open) on to the area you would like to use for your cover.

2. Measure the book and cut the t-shirt around the book while giving an allowance of 3" on the sides, and 1.5" on the top and bottom of the book, like so:

3. Fold the top and bottom excess edging parts in to create a sturdy and clean edge for your book cover and pin down like so:

4. Sew the edges down:

5. Fold and sew down the sides of the cover being very careful to get as close to the edge as possible (1/8"), this is where you create the "pocket" for the front and back covers of the book.

6. Put your swanky new book cover on your book!



7. Show off your fancy new book cover.....maybe even to the mother-in-law who gave you that tourist t-shirt, lest it inspire her to give you more t-shirts!!!! Enjoy!!!

For more great blogs from Lorina of The Original Beadscarf, click HERE!

recycled bath mat

recently the towel that my husband has been using since college (!) sustained some injuries that made it unusable:

unusable as a towel, that is. as the base for a new bath mat, it was perfect. and so i embarked on a project to dress up our bathroom.

materials:

- an old towel
- a yard or so of fabric that you'd like to place your just-out-of-the-shower feet on [i used the ruffle from an old bedspread]
- pins
- needle and thread, or sewing machine

method:

1) cut your towel into two equal-sized rectangles, at whatever size will fit best in your bathroom.

2) iron your fabric, and cut it into strips that are 4-1/2" wide, and 4" longer than the sides of your rectangle in length (so, unless you've cut squares out of your towel, you'll have 2 strips of one length and 2 strips of another).

3) iron down a 1/4" fold on each of the long sides of the strips, then fold in half and iron the whole strip flat, until it looks like this:

then fold back 2" at the short ends of each strip, and iron down.

4) place the two rectangles of towel on top of each other, lined up neatly. then place the strips of fabric under the edges of the towels and fold them over at the crease that you ironed in, so that they create a border. follow the photos below to make neat corners:

5) if you like the way it looks at this point, just sew a straight stitch along the inside edges of the border, being sure that you catch both the front and back edges, and you're all done!

6) however if, like me, you're not crazy about the color of your towel, or just want more of the fabric in the design, or just want to make life more difficult for yourself, you can keep going. i decided to fill in the middle with a lattice design, like the back of an old lawn chair. if you are going to go this route, don't sew that broder fabric down just yet....

start by cutting a bunch of strips of fabric in a width that looks appealing to you (i used 2"). remember to add a 1/2" to that width for finishing the edges. measure the open space of your mat that you need to fill, and figure out how many strips you need to cut to fill it. for length, cut them an inch longer than the open space, to allow for them to overlap (or, acutally, underlap) with the border fabric.

iron down a 1/4" on each of the long sides of the strips, then sew them down with a straight or zig-zag stitch.

**if you are working with a fabric that's prone to fraying, add 1" to the width that you decide on for the strips, and fold the edges of the fabric over on themselves again before sewing down.

7) weave the strips together...

...pin them around the edges, and baste them to the towels.

8) then put the border fabric back in place, fold it over the lattice, and pin it down. sew a straight stitch along the inside edges of the trim, being sure that you go through both the front and back edges.

and that's all!

- cakehouse

my green craft: cakehouse

though i knew that i wanted to start my own business after graduating from design school, it took me a rather ridiculously long time to settle on what that business would be. i had studied textile design, so i knew i wanted to work in the fabric medium; then i figured out that i wanted to do home accessories, and to silkscreen. okay, good! but i couldn't get past that point. only when i realized that i should work with recycled fabric—incorporating my love of everything vintage and secondhand, and my ever-growing want to make my life greener—did my business really start to take solid shape. of course, i still had to decide on a product to launch with, so i upped the eco ante by choosing to make cloth napkins.

i now make napkins and coasters, out of fabric that i find at thrift stores all over the city and sometimes beyond—whenever we go on vacation, i manage to work in a trip to the local thrift stores (there's a great website that makes this possible). i mostly work with bedsheets, curtains, tableclothes, and the occasional housecoat. i cut them up, sew them back together, and print on them with nontoxic water-based inks.

i try to keep with the green/recycling ethos at every level of cakehouse, not just in terms of the products themselves. i wash all my fabric in natural detergent, and dry it on the line in my backyard (9 months out of the year, anyway). my sewing machine is from 1965 (via ebay), my ironing board came from freecycle (and is possibly from before 1965...), my cutting and piecing table came from a family in my neighborhood that was giving it away. i just recycled some unwanted shutters into fantastic displays for when i sell at markets and fairs. not only is it great for the earth to re-use instead of buying new, but it really satisfies me on an aesthetic level to look around my studio and see things with a history, things with a little wear and therefore, i think, more personality.

[you can read more about my adventures in greening my life on a more personal level here.]

- cakehouse