Artist and ‘upcycler’ Michael Yonke turns reclaimed wood harvested generations ago into stunning, high-end eco-friendly art and furniture. All of his designs have an upcycled material content from 90 to 99 percent and have a modern aesthetic that reaches beyond the rustic look commonly found in upcycled furniture.
The austere geometric designs paired with perfectly polished and stained wood give these pieces, which include chairs, tables, benches and wall art, a sense of sophisticated simplicity.
You can see Yonke’s work in person right now at the Atrium Gallery at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. The exhibit, “Reclaim, Reuse, Renew”, will be up until September 26th. Many pieces are also available in his Etsy shop.
From lovely dangling earrings made from blue-tinted mother-of-pearl discs to elegant recycled glass wine decanters, SERRV International has a wealth of high quality goods created by artisans and farmers around the world. When you buy jewelry, holiday décor and home goods from SERRV, you’re helping to give someone else a better life.
From Serrv.org:
Our work encompasses more than just buying and selling.
We offer prepayments so our partners can sustain their business.
Create new designs so they can build their markets.
Teach new skills so they can develop their craft.
Provide grants so they can expand their resources.
We support equal rights for women.
Guide sustainable development.
And of course, pay a fair wage.
There’s a lot of really great stuff on this website – perfect for gift-giving. Check it out!
It’s not difficult to find page after page of awesome organic, upcycled and otherwise eco-friendly stuff at online handmade goods market Etsy.com. But, some of the gear you’ll find stands out in a crowd because it’s just plan ingenious. Check out these five ultra-crafty, creative home décor items made from old books, glass bottles, light bulbs, license plates and wine barrel staves.
Unusual and exquisitely crafted, this beautiful wreath (above) is made from the pages of a book called The New Phonetic Chardenal, dated 1946. Simple Joys Paperie makes papercraft from old books that are falling apart, have pages missing or otherwise damaged. Recycled Rolling Rock Beer Bottle Coasters
Rolling rock beer bottles have been kiln-fired and flattened into bubbly, surprisingly pretty glass coasters with the label still intact. YAVA Glass also sells a matching set of 4 upcycled Rolling Rock glasses.
Lightbulb Terrarium
Now that so many people have switched to CFLs, what to do with all those discarded conventional light bulbs? Some of them have been ingeniously transformed into miniature terrariums filled with moss and stones, and displayed on a copper wire base.
Any car and/or travel enthusiast would love this cute little clock, made from a hand-cut portion of a recycled California license plate along with recycled Chevy car timing gear. Powered by a precise Quartz component with black metal hands and a red second hand.
Wine Barrel Stave Glass and Bottle Display
Etsy seller SantaBarbaraCrafts has taken a section of wine barrel stave and upcycled it into a simple yet stylish way to display a bottle of wine and two glasses. Unique and creative, this display is fine-sanded and treated with beeswax and citrus oil wood conditioner for a soft, smooth finish. Each display is one-of-a-kind.
If you’re looking for eco-friendly t-shirts printed with fun, somewhat strange and totally original designs, you’ve got to check out the PartyBots Etsy shop. PartyBots t-shirts, hoodies and tote bags are made from 100% organic cotton, printed with renewable soy printing solvents and low-impact color dyes.
Owner and founder Karl Addison creates all of the rad artwork himself, from the pirate ships and bicycles to the tuna fish and robots. Original art and stationery are also available in the shop.
Check often – there’s something new posted every day!
Oh, the amazing things you can find on Etsy.com. This online market is a treasure trove of handmade goods, and you won’t believe the adorable stuff we found for dogs and cats, from hoodies to vegetarian treats. Check it out, then head to Etsy.com and search for ‘eco pets’ to find even more!
How ridiculously cute is this little coat (above) by Etsy seller Annie’s Sweatshop? It’s a hoodie made from Malden Mills Polartec Polarfleece fabric, which is comprised of recycled post-consumer PET containers an post-industrial polyester waste. It’ll be custom-made to fit your dog perfectly, in your choice of two colors with velcro closures and a little pompom.
Recycled sweatshirt fabric is stuffed with catnip and turned into two wacky cat toys that your feline friends will go crazy for. Everything is stitched on without the use of glues, and they’re big enough not to disappear under your couch. These cute eco cat toys are handmade in Vermont in small batches so the catnip will still be fresh and tasty when you get them.
Etsy seller WhinnyAndWoof makes these fun and colorful dog collars from renewable and pesticide-free hemp webbing, stain-resistant recycled polyester, reusable hardware and water-based inks. They come in a variety of sizes, or you can request a custom size.
Give cats something to scratch other than your furniture. This cat scratch post is made from recycled wood, hemp and carpet remnants with a vertical design that will satisfy your cat’s urge to arch her back and sharpen her claws.
Organic Vegetarian Carob Treats for Dogs by Shorty’s Gourmet
Your dogs will never know that these treats are vegetarian and chocolate-free. They’re organic, vegetarian and free of sugar, corn, salt, artificial colors, artificial flavors, byproducts and preservatives. You’ll get a vacuum-sealed pouch containing about 25 treats made to order by a gourmet chef.
Coup is the online store of indie designer Elektra, who creates cool eco-friendly t-shirts screen printed with her own unique art in New York City. Coup t-shirt designs have an urban, graffiti-inspired look, and include a number of designs celebrating the election of President Obama.
Elektra’s Obama Wings shirt has been seen on a number of celebrities, including Madonna, and the unisex 1.20.09 Obama v-neck was a best-seller at the inauguration.
Coup’s eco-friendly t-shirts (identifiable by the recycling symbol in the photo) are made with a unique blend of organic cotton, recycled polyester and naturally occurring rayon and are low-impact yarn dyed.
Check out all the offerings in Elektra’s shop at coup.etsy.com.
They’re virtually indestructible, built to resist everything from water to UV rays and have the shimmery look of satin. Yet, the materials used to create Interrobang’s stylish range of accessories aren’t some new high-tech creation: they’re seatbelts, collected from junked cars and recycling centers.
Charcoal gray with a pinstriped look and modern shapes, Interrobang’s seat belt accessories include laptop bags, messenger bags, wallets, zipper pouches and day bags. This Sydney, Australia-based Etsy shop also creates bags made from recycled billboard vinyl.
Props to Interrobang for coming up with such an awesome way of upcycling a material that still has many years of usefulness ahead of it.
When shopping for handmade goods online, those in the know head directly to Etsy.com. Etsy brings together thousands of sellers from around the world, offering original art, jewelry, clothing, knick knacks, pottery, toys, pet accessories, bath products and even edibles. It’s also one of the best places on the web to find handmade goods made from upcycled and recycled materials.
The genius behind this extremely popular online shopping site isn’t some Silicon Valley techie, but a former classics major and carpenter in Brooklyn. 28-year-old Rob Kalin launched Etsy in June of 2005, and since then it’s gone nowhere but up. Kalin was able to raise $5 million in three rounds of funding from angel investors including the founders of Flickr and Delicious. Kalin repeatedly turned down big money funding offers from venture capitalists who wanted a 20% stake in the company, and he hasn’t looked back since.
Tens of thousands of sellers proffer an amazing variety of goods ranging in quality from the kind of country crafts you’d see on eBay to high end gallery-worthy art, design and fashion. And, hundreds of thousands of buyers eagerly snatch up crafts of all sorts. In 2008, Etsy sold $100 million worth of handmade goods.
Kalin was able to take eBay’s concept of a massive online person-to-person marketplace and improve upon it in a variety of ways, finding a thread of humanity in the often cold and impersonal nature of online interaction. At the basis of Etsy is the idea of walking through a physical marketplace, marveling at all of the wonderful things you see and meeting new people along the way.
Kalin and Etsy have helped put handmade goods into the spotlight, and his fingerprints remain on the site despite the fact that the company has grown to 60 employees, with former NPR executive Maria Thomas serving as CEO.
In an interview with Lindsay Campbell of Wallstrip, Kalin explains the value of handmade versus mass-produced.
“What I see Etsy as tapping into is this desire to buy things that have this other layer of meaning on them. If your house was burning down, what five items would you take? Your TV? Who cares? It’s mass-produced… the bunny that your grandmother made you when you were a kid? You’re taking that. You’re taking things that have this story behind them because somebody made them for you.”
Whenever I’m in search of handmade items, Etsy.com is the first place I look. This online marketplace simply has the largest selection of high quality handmade goods on the ‘net – and many of them are eco-friendly, too. Team Eco Etsy is a group of sellers that offer green items, making it easy to find products by category like clothing, housewares, art and even edibles.
Now that it’s officially spring, I’ve been on the hunt for handmade, eco-friendly garden accents. Etsy didn’t disappoint. Here are some of the highlights that I found:
Reclaimed Wood Mason Bee Box – Made from reclaimed old-growth fir or cedar, this simple but pretty box provides the perfect place for bees – including mason bees, hornfaced bees, leafcutters and Osmia Californica – to nest in your garden. When you encourage bees to hang around your garden, you’ll get a greater yield thanks to their pollination.
Upcycled Traffic Light Bird Feeder – Repurposed traffic lights are made into a unique, brightly colored bird feeder that will catch the light beautifully. $3 from the sale of this innovative bird feeder will go to the National Audubon Society.
Recycled Record Mirror – As recently seen on Good Morning America, this mirror is made from an old vinyl 45 rpm record, hand-painted with acrylics with an original mandala design in a slate gray color. It’ll provide a pop of color and just a hint of illumination from reflected light.
Nature Garden Sign Made from Cedar Fencing – Hand-carved from a piece of reclaimed cedar fencing by Trillium Artisans member Tim Combs of the Reclamation Project, this rustic sign says “Nature” in Kanji. Cedar is naturally weather-resistant, and the sign has an aged appearance that will make it look right at home in your garden.
Want more? Browse the ‘Housewares’ section of the Team Eco Etsy website, and check out the other categories as well!
Chilly sheets and blankets in bed don’t exactly facilitate peaceful slumber during the winter. Turning up the heat can be wasteful, and really, it isn’t necessary – especially if you use a low-tech solution like a hot water bottle. These old-fashioned bed warmers are making a comeback in Japan where energy efficiency is a top priority.
Artist Janice Yan Yan Wu of Montreal, Canada creates these cute (in that ugly monster sort of way) little hand-sewn hot water bottle covers from recycled fabrics. Each little ‘character’ comes complete with a hot water bottle bladder inside, so you can fill it up with hot water, get your bed all warm and toasty and enjoy that heat all night.
Save energy, go low-tech and support handmade crafts! Check out Janice’s shop at Etsy.com.
After being betrayed by large toy corporations that manufacture their products in Chinese factories with little regard for the health of the children that the toys will ultimately belong to, parents in America have turned to local toy makers who thoughtfully hand-craft items like dolls, train sets and blocks. But, now, because of a ham-fisted attempt by the U.S. government to belatedly control an industry that puts profits far ahead of people, those handmade toy artisans might lose their businesses.
It seems like every week we hear about another popular toy that’s being taken off the shelves (after many have already been sold) due to high levels of lead, unsafe parts and other safety problems. So, stricter regulations are certainly welcome. But, in passing the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) in August, Congress failed to exclude safe handmade toys made in the U.S., Canada and Europe.
Among other things, the CPSIA bans lead and phthalates in toys, mandates third-party testing and certification for all toys and requires toy makers to permanently label each toy with a date and batch number.
All of these changes will be fairly easy for large, multinational toy manufacturers to comply with. Large manufacturers who make thousands of units of each toy have very little incremental cost to pay for testing and update their molds to include batch labels.
For small American, Canadian, and European toymakers, however, the costs of mandatroy testing will likely drive them out of business.
A toymaker, for example, who makes wooden cars in his garage in Maine to supplement his income cannot afford the $4,000 fee per toy that testing labs are charging to assure compliance with the CPSIA.
A work at home mom in Minnesota who makes dolls to sell at craft fairs must choose either to violate the law or cease operations.
A small toy retailer in Vermont who imports wooden toys from Europe, which has long had stringent toy safety standards, must now pay for testing on every toy they import.
And even the handful of larger toy makers who still employ workers in the United States face increased costs to comply with the CPSIA, even though American-made toys had nothing to do with the toy safety problems of 2007.
What this means is, unless the law is modified, handmade toys will be illegal to sell in the United States. Some European toy makers have already announced that they will no longer be selling their products in the U.S. come February, meaning parents have fewer safe products to choose from.
As the Handmade Toy Alliance put it, “If this law had been applied to the food industry, every farmers market in the country would be forced to close while Kraft and Dole prospered.” That doesn’t make any sense at all.
Here’s how you can help: write to your United States congressman or congresswoman and your senator to request changes to the CPSIA that would protect handmade toys. You can use this sample letter, provided by the Handmade Toy Alliance. We’ve got to protect the local artisans who make a living off providing our kids with safe, natural alternatives to the plastic junk made in China.
Get a whole new tree’s worth of Christmas ornaments without buying a single item. Just do what Plenty Mag did and get some friends and family together for an ornament-making party. Check out what they managed to create with 100% found or recycled objects – they look pretty nice! Here are instructions for the Tin Can Star – check out Plenty Mag online for the bottle-cap-and-bow, the wreath and a gingerbread man.
Tin Can Star
MATERIALS
Three 42 oz aluminium cans
Aluminum take-out food containers
INSTRUCTIONS
Clean and dry cans. Then, carefully cut off each can’s top and bottom and uncurl the remaining piece of aluminum, flattening overnight under a heavy book if necessary.
Make basic origami stars using flattened aluminum instead of paper (just be careful of the sharp edges). You can view an animated diagram of the pattern and folding technique at origami-club.com/en.
Use one of the flattened 42 oz cans to make the biggest origami star. Use the aluminum take-out containers to make stars that get gradually smaller as you layer them. I used three stars for stacking.
Use another 42 oz can to cut out the flat base star.
Coil the third flattened can into a cone shape. Use a dab of nontoxic glue to seal the overlapping edges.
Hold the smallest origami star with its center point facing away from you. Place a dab of glue inside the point. Put the next biggest star inside the smaller star, glue next center point and attach a slightly smaller star, and repeat, working toward the smallest star.
Place the stacked stars on the base star. Add dots of glue where stackers touch the base star’s surface. Make rays from thin strips of tin. Glue these to the back of the base star.
Carefully place star on tin cone, using a tiny dab of glue. Tin cans come in every conceivable color and pattern—have fun mixing it up.
We’ll be featuring more DIY holiday décor and gift ideas every week until the new year, so be sure to check back with us!
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