Local Hero of Recycling

Time to toot my own horn. Thanks to a friend nominating me, I am one of the 10 Local Hero of Recycling from Preserve: Gimme 5. I had applied for a grant through Tri-County Hazardous Waste and Recycling for Reusable Party Packs for classrooms in my community to help reduce the amount of waste during class parties. This sparked Tri-County Hazardous Waste and Recycling to do the same for the community by buying and having available reusable plates, cups, silverware for community events. We ordered the supplies through Preserve which makes reusable dinnerware from 100% post consumer plastic. They have started a program to recycle the #5 plastic from items such as yogurt cups and hummus tubs.

Receiving this grant allowed me to purchase enough supplies of 10 classrooms. When I delivered the items, I went into the classes and taught a short lesson on durable vs. disposable goods and facilitated an art project with the classes. Each class made a reusable classroom decoration, a banner that says "celebrate", from recycled materials. I also brought in my serger and made reusable cloth napkins with each of the kids to include in their classroom party pack. After receiving this grant, I was contacted by Preserveware telling me that I was a winner of their Local Hero's of Recycling contest! They sent me a great gift package and I had a great time opening the box and sharing it's contents with my family. Thanks Preserve, Stonyfield, Tom's of Maine, Brita and Seventh Generation.

Now that this dinnerware is available for use, it has been used at the Made for Mosier event as well as the Survivor Lunch at the Columbia Gorge Relay for Life, reducing the amount of waste in our landfill!

Recycled Arts Festival

Vancouver's Recycled Arts Festival is just around the corner, June 25th and 26th. This is one of my favorite events of the year. It is located at Ester Short Park in downtown Vancouver, Washington, adjacent to their thriving Saturday Market. 100 artists will present their creations made from recycled materials.

My tent is conveniently located across from the Tossed and Found tent. All year items that were rescued from the landfill are collected and put on display in the tent. Then on Sunday, raffle tickets are handed out and is your number is drawn, you have won an item from the Tossed and Found tent. Last year my mom walked away with an entire wicker furniture set! It is absolutely amazing what people throw out.

I will be debuting my new bags made from recycled windsurf sails.

For more information about the event, checkout their website

http://recycledartsfestival.com/
Hope to see you there!

Scrappy USA

While I was wasting time on pinterest.com, I came across this project made by fellow blogger at seekatesew.blogspot.com and had to make one of my own.

What a great way to use up fabric scraps and as a former 5th grade teacher and lover of USA maps, this was the perfect project for me.

I misjudged the placement of the continental USA on the piece of fabric I had, so I did not have enough room to include Alaska and Hawaii.

I had fun making this project, but it was time consuming and got a bit tedious. A friend of mine has asked me to make another one to hang in her new house, and I keep telling her that if I ever get inspired to make another one, she will be the first one on my list.

Front Entry DIY

I have finally decided to tackle decorating my front entryway. Since we have moved in I have been looking for a great bench or some sort of shoe storage that was not going to cost me very much money. I have seen many wonderful storage benches and solutions, but have not wanted to fork out a hundred dollars or more to have it.

I recently found about 3 yards of IKEA fabric at Goodwill that were the right colors for my entryway. I decided to make my own upholstered bench to sit on while putting on shoes.

I found everything I would need at my local Re-Build It center and garage sales. Along with a handy husband, some spray paint and a staple gun, my bench was completed for less than $20.

Spray Paint

Spray paint... I never realized what a great invention

that was! I have been finding items to spray paint and give a new life, so now my house if filled with color that has been quick and easy to add. I look for items like frames for pictures and mirrors that have interesting details. Many of the retro plastic frames become a new being with new color. Something that was once boring is now a focal point in a room. Now that garage sale season is in full swing, I look forward to Friday mornings when I can go on the hunt for a new project to spray paint.

Spring

There has been an aire of inspiration floating around our home lately. Everyone is creating! My kids are constantly working on collages, sewing projects, outdoor water parks, wildflower arrangements, drawing, just to name a few. I have been scouring yard sales and thrift stores for items to make over or make into something new. The mantle in my living rooms is constantly being added to when a new project gets finished.

Faux Mosaic

Once again I was challenged with finding a use for obsolete materials. My husband came home with a box full of advertising fliers from work, so I got to work coming up with a new project. I am also scheduled to teach at Art Week at a local elementary school and needed one more project to add to the week, so the faux mosaic frames with portraits was born.

The frames are made out of cardboard, painted with acrylic paint. I cut the advertising into 1/2 inch squares and had my kids patiently glue the squares onto the frame to look like a mosaic. Once the pieces were glued in place we covered the frames with glossy Mod Podge. I took a profile picture of each of the kids with my digital camera, then traced their profiles directly from the computer screen. Since the profile pictures were pretty small, I chose to cut them out instead of asking the kids to do this. It takes a pretty steady hand to cut the profiles out so that they look like the child you photographed.

I am looking forward to trying this project with 60 kids next month during Art Week. I asked two neighbor kids to come and try this project with my kids so that I could get a feel for how long it would take them to complete the project and I wanted to see the results from a range of ages. The photos I have posted are from a kindergartner, 2nd and 3rd grader.