Recycling madly

Last night the BF wanted desperately to watch a really important football game *pah* we usually spend Sunday night together curled up in front of a film, but he begged me, so I spent the night on my 'lil Brother. I've been wanting to make some of these for ages, but just never got around to it. Tissue holders from BellaDia's tutorial. Now my tissues will look snazzy in my new holder and I need never fear pulling a tatty plastic covered pack from my bag. I use hankies too because they're washable and more eco-friendly, but I do like to keep a travel pack of tissues in my bag for emergencies.




Pretty purple fabric with butterflys for the outside, and a paler fabric with little purple flowers for the lining.

I've also made some suncatchers for my garden out of some dvd's, some little mirrors, a couple of glass nuggets and some beads. There are three of these in my garden now. One of them I engraved with little flowers. A nice eco-friendly recycling craft. The dvd's were mis-burns and would have been thrown away otherwise. Yay for recycling! I love it when a project costs me nothing, especially when money's so tight.

Here's a sheet of my hand-made paper. I soaked some shredded paper last night and I couldn't wait, so I blended it with my trusty stick blender (yeah, it's my kitchen one, but *shrugs* kids eat paper all the while, and as far as I know, no-one ever died from eating paper) and made a few sheets. It's a little lumpy because I probably didn't let it soak for long enough, or blend it fine enough, but I like the kind of speckly effect from all the bank statement print and other junk with our names and addresses on (identity theft is a big concern in Britain at the moment). It's drying on top of the stove at the moment. It's been raining on and off all day, so I couldn't dry it outside.

And here's my painted spindle. I just used ordinary waterbased emulsion on it (my living room walls are this purple colour), then painted a star on it in pink metallic paint and used gold relief outliner for the dots. I modge-podged a sparkley coating on it, then coated it again in an acrylic seal (because modge-podge can stay a little tacky I find). I finished it off with some golden tear-drop jewels. When it spins it makes a pattern like a spinning top! :-)