A Humane Turtle

I didn’t count how many leaves I made, but there are probably around 130 of them. I made them according to a simple crochet veined leaf pattern that I found on Ravelry. I made a bunch with the original pattern, then made a few with just half of the stem, and then I figured that it was easiest and prettiest just without the stem, so I went with that for most of the leaves.

In other news, the other plant that I took into my care liked – and still likes – it much better here. It even got two beautiful blossoms!

The process of decorating my apartment is a slow one. I want every part of it to be special. I want to have a positive connection to the items I own, and not own too much of them. So I want to put some effort into the decoration I put up, without spending much money on it.

When I saw the family tree on All Things Paper, I knew I wanted to make something similar myself. As in the original project, I used toilet paper rolls for the leaves and cardboard for the branches, but I also used cardboard instead of photo frames. I made mine purple (because purple is awesome), with some black shadows and golden highlights. Finding the right pictures is still work-in-progress

The tree with pictures.

Before I put pictures up.

Detail.

Time for another upcycling project!

So I have this big-ass dining table in my apartment, extendable to fit at least 6 people. I finally tested it in its extended form last week, when I had people over for the UX book club. There was only one problem: It was empty. I had no decoration for it whatsoever. Well, I have candles, but one tiny candle on a big table doesn’t really do much. So I decided, in a cloak-and-dagger operation, to dig through my paper trash and make something out of it.

I ended up using just three paper bags – the ones bread comes in. I opened them up into one flat layer, and colored them with acrylic paint: two with purple paint and white highlights, one with golden paint. Then I cut 2cm wide stripes, and wove them together. I glued all the overlaps. Voila!

Oh, and for the white part I cut three circles out of a white plastic bag, cutting around a pot with a Stanley knife. I stuck them together in the middle using double-sided tape. Then I added a simple line of golden acrylic paint.

The reverse side of the paper part looks like this:

The bread was a little oily, that’s why there are some dark spots

I didn’t document the process, so I can’t give you a step-by-step guide. But maybe you can tell by looking at the leftovers. Here you go!

I recently shared a bunch of ideas on how to make gift wrapping out of trash. I wrapped another set of gifts today. While the first set was made of trash I found in my apartment in Oslo, I had to find stuff around my parents’ house this time round.

One thing to look for is shopping bags. Some stores have bags with awesome designs, and they work really well for gift wrapping.

The paper bag of the local supermarket reads “Everything is going to be alright.” Isn’t that perfect for gifts? All I had to do was add some details: some birds, and the gift card as dot on the i.

For this gift I used a plastic shopping bag. The blue handle worked surprisingly well as decoration.

I have tons of reinforcement rings that I haven’t used for ages. Well, until today, that is. I used them to make a hole-y tree The ribbon is made of the material that the rings came on. No waste at all!

A CD wrapped in CDs, is that possible? I say yes! Cutting CDs is a bit messy though, I added tape around the edges to prevent additional mess. For this particular wrapping, I used old Knoppix 5 and Kubuntu 6 installer CDs. I will not miss them.

I also found a piece of a shirt that I had cut up for another project. The leftover I found was the bit around the shoulder. The seam there makes a nice line in the final wrapping. I added color with a stitched star and the stitches around the edges. I tried backstitch for the bottom edge, but I changed to  straight stitch for the other two edges. It made the wrapping easy to open, and the reverse side looked much nicer.

So far, I had used paper and plastic trash, but I hadn’t used food scraps yet. I decided that tangerine zest and and nutshells where both available without end and perfect for the season. And they look nice, don’t they?

For the last gift I didn’t experiment much with new materials. Well, I hadn’t used paper towels before (and no, I didn’t take those out if the trash – I used new ones). But this gift isn’t really about the materials; it is about the looks. It’s a double-cream hazelnut cake with a whole bunch of cream topping. Yum!

Update: I posted a part two now.

The other night I wrapped some gifts for loved ones. I’m not the wrapping paper kind of person though. When it comes to wrapping gifts, I want to recycle as much as possible. But I still want gifts that look nice! So, most of the materials I used I took from the paper trash. For books, I often used parts of the packaging they were shipped in. Here are some detailed shots of the gifts:

For the first gift I used the original packaging and painted it with acrylic paint.  I like the purple (front) side much better than the back.

Here I also used original packaging, added stripes of old printouts  and a picture I found in an old magazine.  Then I added some gold paint to make it look a little fancier.

Here I cut up a toilet paper roll as decoration.

I wrapped one gift in a magazine ad. The ad was about organic products (not all vegan, unfortunately). The card is a piece of a pasta carton. I put it all together with rubber bands.

Old bags from a local deli and a bit of string make nice gift wrapping, too. The card is made from a piece of a tea box.

And last but not least: bits of cardboard  make Tetris-style gift wrapping (card included).