Recycled Art and Gifts

I love art. I consider myself an artsy person.

I also love, as you know, nature and Mother Earth. And I always, always like to do everything in sync, meaning not hurting the environment by doing what I love to do. So how can I do art with good conscious about the environment?

Do it with recycled materials! Let's call this ENVIRONART, how about that?

The other day, I found a very interesting looking iron thing in our garbage area. It has several rings that connect and I can't wait to get my hands on that one. When I'm finished, I'll post a picture here so you can see what I came up with.

I either use recycled materials for our house arts and/or buy supplies at garage sales (water colors, crayons, wool, threads,...)

Sometimes I feel like we live in such an overwhelming world and everybody I know really has everything (if not too much) of anything, meaning it becomes harder and harder to find gifts for people.

If I have trouble thinking of something, I often make a gift myself.

I've painted kids art and framed it (in frames I either found on the street at garbage day or got at garage sales!) or recently I sewed booboo packs (I call them FLEXABOO because I fill them with flax seeds).

This is one of the paintings I have done

And here is Liam's booboo pack. It's about 4x2 1/2" and here's how I do it:

• Take a fabric rest (approx. 8 1/2 x3") and fold it in half.
• Figure out where you want to sew the name if you want that and take a much lighter thread. Stitch the name in on the outside.
• Then turn the fabric and sew around the edges (obviously this is easiest with a sewing machine, which I still don't own :-(, leaving one of the short sides open.
• Turn your sack inside out so the name is visible and the sewing unvisible.
• Now fill your little sack with flax seeds and sew the last side tight shot as well. And voila!
• Put in freezer (it won't get freezing cold like regular booboo packs) and use whenever needed.

I'm also in the process of trying to crochet finger puppets with recycled wool soon. I hope it goes well - I'll keep you posted.