With x-mas fast approaching, we’re resurrecting this gift basket and dog toy organizer. It’s a cool project for the furry friends in your life!
Make this dog bone basket for yourself to organize your dog toys in or make it for any dog lover on your gift list; it makes a great gift basket around the holidays or any time of year!
I always avoid indoor paint projects because of the fumes. Even with low VOC paint, I don’t want to pollute what precious indoor air quality I have in my basement craft studio – especially in the winter months when I can’t even crack a window open. Did you know that there are no VOCs in milk paint? Because it’s truly non-toxic, I get to keep every brain cell so I can keep dreaming up new projects!
When I found out that you could add a bonding agent to make milk paint stick to challenging things like glass, metal and varnished items, that was the icing on the cake. Homestead House was kind enough to send us some milk paint and bonding agent to experiment with when I expressed an interest so when I spied this cute little varnished adirondack chair at Value Village, I knew I had my first test subject to try out!
[This post was previously posted by my husband on another website; I’m excited to share his project here with you today on Birdz of a Feather – Sara]
My wife’s first computer was a PC with a whopping 40 MB hard drive (I’m a Mac guy myself). I have to laugh at that now because these days storage devices can hold many thousands of times more memory – and we can easily fill a 3GB hard drive in just over a year with all our blog photos! If you’ve ever scratched your head and wondered what you can do with old computer parts, this is the tutorial for you! We took her old computer apart and upcycled the hard drive into a one-of-a-kind clock.
If you follow Birdz of a Feather, you’ll know that my husband and I are big on saving things from landfill and have a penchant for curbside finds. Last summer hubs was out on errands and drove by a series of garage sale signs scattered across a few blocks. As he passed them one-by-one, he noticed that the signs were all taped onto various drawers.
This duct tape pop art portrait will help you get your craft mojo on! I thought it would be fun to open with one of our YouTube videos because the music is so awesome and it will put you in the mood for some Craft Rehab! It’s not hard to guess whose picture is appearing before your very eyes; the music should be a dead give-away! It’s only a minute and a half long, so enjoy:
Whenever I look at the recycle pile, I see untapped potential. Little did I know that when I had an epiphany about the tuna can one day while making lunch, creating tuna can swing outs would be so addictive! I had never seen it done anywhere before, so it was quite an interesting challenge to figure out the mechanics of it.
You may have seen the two I did previously to corral hot drink supplies and to store costume jewelry. I’ve since created two new ones: for office supplies, like push pins and paper clips, and even one for a little friend to house his collection of hot wheels!
My husband and I have always been compelled to create using garbage finds and unexpected materials, so it was a natural progression to expand our blog to include crafts. We called our new craft section ‘Craft Rehab’ because our goal is to encourage others to try sustainable crafting. It’s all about the 3 R’s – reduce, reuse and recycle.
All good intentions aside, as much as we love to do our small part to divert waste, we’re also mindful that a project has to be easy to do and that the materials have to be readily available – or who’s going to want to replicate it? But it also doesn’t hurt to work in some ‘wow factor’. I think we accomplished those goals with this unique upcycle.
Along with the tuna cans, we’ve used recycled scrap paper for the labels, smoothie straws we had in the pantry, a plastic straw from a broken insulated cup, the end of a dried-up pen and leftover black iron pipe from another project. The Tuna Can Swing Out is both sustainable and practical: each can opens fully to reveal its contents then closes right up again for dust-free storage! You can use it for anything small: you’re only limited by your imagination.
We hope you use this tutorial to inspire your own sustainable craft project because, as our motto points out, good planets are hard to find! Continue reading
Last summer, I made it my mission to create and craft using nothing but items I found on garbage day within a few block perimeter of my house. Unfortunately my mission was prematurely cut short after my craft studio sprang a leak and I no longer had a place to work and store my finds 🙁 I did however, score a few great things before becoming water logged and having to put my projects on hold!
It’s amazing what you can find kicked to the curb every week. It breaks my heart to see the abundance of waste that goes to landfill when there’s much that can be done to breathe a second life in it! As I walked down the street on this particular day, I spotting something in the distance.
When you think of wall art for the bedroom, stained glass probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind, but I think incorporating a piece of stained glass can make a stunning addition to any bedroom decor!
I’ve always had a fascination with stained glass and longed to own a piece, but the time and expertise that goes into creating these beautiful works of art unfortunately priced it right out of my budget when I young. After purchasing my first house, I was house rich but cash poor so when I discovered a beginner’s stained glass course at my local community centre, I jumped at the chance to learn the art. Several years later I continued taking courses at a stained glass studio, when I moved to a new neighbourhood, where I dabbled with glass mosaic:
You may be a little doubtful that you can turn a tuna can into something you’d want to put on full display in the bedroom, kitchen or office, but have a look at the video. My catchall is both attractive and useful – in an industrial sort of way 🙂
In my previous post, I showed you how to transform these shot glasses into festive oil burning candles. Here’s how they started out; notice the logo:
At the end of the post you’ll see how pretty they turned out in the final display! Continue reading
Some of you may remember this oil burning candle project from last December. I’m bringing it back again because I posted it too late last year. With Hanukkah just a month away and Christmas around the corner, there’s plenty of time to try these – whether you make them for Hanukkah, Christmas, New Years or even Valentines day!
One big improvement over last year: I’ve come up with brand new and innovative reusable wicks for these oil burning candles. I can’t wait to show you how easy they are in my next post!
Below is an entire box of shot glasses my husband found in the garbage. I interecepted them just before he donated them because shot glasses are perfect to upcycle for this project! Although they had advertising on them, I found a beautiful way to make them look festive for the season!
I used 9 glasses in total for my holiday display. If you’re going to do this project, and you don’t already have some shot glasses on hand, pick some up from your local thrift store. Don’t forget that it doesn’t matter what they look like, because we are going to fix that! Continue reading