green crafting: recycled books

Last two weeks was my summer vacation. I tried a no Internet policy and spend my time crafting and reading. I succeeded in the crafting and reading part. The best that I can say is that I have no more book reader's block! That is a big thing. For a year I just could not put myself towards reading, not even a children's book! Which is very strange for me, because I am a big fan of reading. Anyways, I managed to finish one book and start another during my vacation. And I am loving it once again.
(Did you somewhere expect a but, well, here it comes:) But I did not quite succeed in the no Interet thing. The first week went by with just two or three times checking my e-mail, but the second week I was my old Internet-addict-self again. Sorry. But there are too many great blogs out there! And so much inspiration!
With my freshly lifted book readers block, I stumbled upon this great idea for the recycling of books: the living garden of knowledge in Métis, Quebec. It is made with 40000 books, in the middle of a forest.

This inspired me to search for more great things made with recycled books. I mostly found prints and paintings on old book pages, like this one from owlstudio on Etsy:

And this faery tale one on an old dictonary page by DreameryStudio on Etsy:

Garlands are always a great thing to make with recycled paper, like this lovely garland made from an old book by bibliocide on Etsy. (You should really check out this shop if you like the recycled book/paper theme!)

But what amazed me most during my search on Etsy where the sculpures, especially this one by Kenjio:

And the best recycling idea is this last one: vintage playing blocks combined with pictures from cowboys out of an old book. This makes a great toy! These 77 cowboy blocks are hand-recycled by ownbackyard on Etsy.


Happy crafting!
Love, Inkie

Are you inspired? Please show us your creations at our Flickr group.

Do you want more green crafting? Check out my posts about recycled sweater pillows, recycled maps and recycled paper crafts.

green crafting: recycled maps

While cleaning my house, I found a big box filled with maps. A lot of these maps I am never going to use again, they are old or from places I probably won't visit again. But I think they will be a great addition to my craft supplies. The first thing that came to my mind was using it as stationary (as an addition to my vintage map stationary that I bought a couple of years ago). But a little search on Etsy and other places on the web gave me a lot more ideas.

What do you tink of these?

Map heart garland by lovefromchloe on Etsy

Vintage map magnet by pommesfrites on Etsy

Recycled NYC subway map by ecoist

Gift tags by Milomade

Maps & Butterflies by Image Surgery


I also found some cute DIY's:
- Map coasters
- Vintage map bangle
- Butterfly art
- Vintage map treat bag
- Map lamp

Happy crafting!
Love, Inkie

Are you inspired? Please show us your creations at our Flickr group.

Do you want more green crafting? Check out my post about recycled paper crafts.

Buttefly Mobiles and a Butterfly Collage

Google the term 'Butterfly Mobile' and you get an enormous response with gorgeous examples of butterfly mobiles that would be perfect for a nursery, kids room or birthday party decoration. I have seen many versions of this basic idea starting with the 'no longer available' white butterfly chandelier from pottery barn kids:

Project nursery has a great DIY based on this white version too:

Craftstylish has a great idea for using fabric butterflies to create a mobile for a wedding decor item:

Mimi Bella Boo has a great way to create a mobile using sticks as the hangers:

I always love to see the creativity with felt over at Bugs and Fishes by Lupin:

Ali Edwards has a version of the butterfly mobile:

I selected some of my favorite versions and these are only a few of the varieties out there!
(p.s. Paper Craft magazine has a very simple version in their magazine this month) I will not be taking credit for making this post into a DIY.....I just wanted to show you my inspiration and what I created based on all of the ideas out there!

Okay so I have seen this idea zillions of places. Anyway, my friend commissioned me to create a large canvas butterfly collage for her. I hand cut a bunch of butterflies and punched out a bunch more. I painted the large canvas, adhered the butterflies with glue dots, covered over the entire surface with modge podge, let it dry. Viola! A gorgeous butterfly collage that I am sure my friend will love--it is for her daughter's room!

When I was finished with the collage, I had some small punched butterflies left over so I decided to make a mobile with them.

I had a small blue emboridery hoop, and my sewing machine.

I made strands of garland and then I tied them along the hoop.

 Viola! A gorgeous butterfly mobile that I plan to surprise my friend with!!

I had a lot of fun sewing the garland and I know it is something I will do again....
 Design Sponge has a great idea for using this same sewing technique to decorate packages!

Hope you enjoyed this post. If you decide to make something similar, post a link in the comments, I would love to see what you create!

green crafting: recycled paper crafts

Three weeks ago I showed you how you can use old magazines to bring some spring inside your house. Today I want to show you some more ways to use recycled paper for your crafts.

Garlands

There are many ways of making paper garlands, like:
-Cut out shapes and sew them together into a garland
-Use stripes of paper to make a paper chain garland

You can find some great examples here:
-Valentine garland
-Christmas garland
-Sewn recycled paper garland
-Paper chain garland
-Laura's garland

Jewelry

I found some great examples of jewelry made with or out of recycled paper. What do you think of this jewelry from recycled magazines? Or my favorite: a bangle, decorated with a vintage map?

Gift wrapping

I am not the person that has piles and piles of nice gift wrapping paper. Sometimes I buy some with a nice pattern, but most of the time I have none. So the gifts I give are usually wrapped in someting else. Magazines, paper bags, newspapers, plastic bags, even an old coloring book. I used it all. Maybe next time, I will even use some extra recycled paper to make a cute bow or flower to put on the package.

Do you want more?

What about placemats?


Wall art?


Or even yarn made from newspapers?


Happy crafting!
Love, Inkie

Are you inspired? Please show us your creations at our Flickr group.

Las Vegas Memory Album

Hello!! I am so excited to show you the first few pages of my Las Vegas  Trip Memory Album. You can read about my preliminary work, getting the pictures ready, here and here.


For this album, I decided not to use the 12X12 album and opted instead for a very versatile 8 1/2 X 11 three-ring notebook. I picked up a couple of pretty ones at Target recently and I knew that I had to use one for this book. When selecting an album, choose something you really like!

The smaller format allows me a fair amount of flexibility and I love being able to move the pages around easily using clear photo-safe page protectors. Normally, when I go on a long trip, I try to keep a travel journal so that I can jot down my thoughts and ideas while I am actually in the moment. Since I was sick right up until the day of the trip, a travel journal was at the bottom of my list of priorities. I am still able to recall quite a bit just by looking through the pictures.

On this page, I used a clear screenprinted page from Hambly. Since I wanted to use both sides, I just used two collages of the same size and put my titles in the same place on each side....This also covers any adhesive that might have otherwise shown through.

It is hard to photograph those clear pages without a glare! I absolutely love Hambly papers!!

I have a ton of trip ephemera and I wanted to keep this page from a magazine. I have always loved using things that are already printed, so I simply covered the original magazine image with a picture of me! Haha!!

This was a fun page to make it was so simple. Just some handwritten journaling, thickers lettters, and a pre-made photo collage. Oh, and I used up some stickers that I have been holding on to for ages!

I decided to create pages on the back of each page....her is what is on the back of the page above.

I had a mishmash of iphone photos from the plane ride...they aren't that great in quality, but paired up with the journaling, they tell a great story about flying, for me.

We ate a lot on our trip so I wanted to dedicate a page to our food experiences. I could have written a whole lot more about each experience (I probably will write more later) but this is a general page dedicated to the food. I used a receipt and snipits from a magazine about the various restaurants.

Okay, this is probably my favorite page of all! I knew I was going to make this page the second they slid my headbands down into the paper bag. I almost said, 'No thanks, I don't need a bag,' but then I saw how cool it was! I trimmed it down to 8 1/2 X 11 and rounded the corners. A photo from my shopping experience is paired with some magazine clippings and a scrap from the Urban Outfitters catalog. I also did some real stitching on this page with my sewing machine!

Spring flowers

Hi, I am Inkie, I am the green birdie. Every tuesday I will bring you loads of green and eco-friendly inspiration and DIY's.

Spring has finally arrived in our garden, with the first bulbs flowering and some green popping up everywhere.

I like to have a little of that spring feeling and colors in my house. This weekend I made some flowers out of old magazines to bring that little bit of color in the house. It was very easy and quickly done. All you need are scissors, old (colorfull) magazines, some tape and if you like some green yarn.

First, rip out the nice, colorfull pages from the magazines (pages with no, or hardly any text and with just one main color work best for this purpose).
Next, cut out squares, about the size of normal folding paper.


Use your best origami skills to fold flowers and stick them to some rolled up paper that will be the stem. I also used some green yarn to cover the stems on some of the flowers. When you are not an origami-hero, you can also cut out flower shapes and stick those to the stems.
This is my bouquet, with all different flowers:


Want to show off your own recycled paper flowers? Come and show them in our Flickr group!

Love, Inkie