g&g

This article over at Feelgood Style got me thinking. They list some really good resourses for recycled or tree-free giftwrap. I wonder, though, if you could take it even a bit further! Why can’t giftwrap be part of the gift? The little fabric pouch pictured above works as wrapping for a gift certificate and has all manner of uses once the shopping spree is done! My mother in law once wrapped my birthday present in a pretty yellow tin. Instead of the wrapping hitting the trash, it sits on my desk holding pens and pencils! Every time I reach for a writing implement now, I think of her.

Of course, sometimes you’re picking up a last-minute present and don’t have time to track down reusable wrapping doodads. Maybe a gift bag is a good choice here? A lot of folks save those and reuse them to wrap other gifts. What earth-friendly ideas do you guys have for wrapping gifts in a pinch?

Casa Sugar posted a great tutorial on making your own dryer balls! The only question I have is this: the directions include running the little fella through the washer and dryer twice each. So, my felter friends, I would like to know: Can you throw it in with a full load, or do you have to run it through all on its lonesome?

Dave actually gets all the credit for the rain barrel awesomeness at our house. The barrels are sitting up high on concrete blocks, one on each side of the yard. He ran drip irrigation hose out of each one and snaked the hose through our flower beds. The bit of elevation creates enough water pressure that rainwater that the buckets collect trickles through the flowerbeds and keeps our pretty flowers happy! Our setup is pretty much perfect for our back yard’s needs.

I was out taking pictures around town today and stumbled on this awesome rain barrel on display at Donna Van Gogh’s! Maybe our perfect setup could use a little bit of color! Rain barrels seem to only come in black, white or green. Why shouldn’t reusing water be totally colorful and shiny? A plain rainbarrel from a hardware store seems to run between $80 and $100. The custom painted barrel goes for $149 - not bad for such a big piece of custom art!

You guys, the 4th of July is coming fast. I’m not sure what I’m doing for the holiday yet, but I do know that, if you’re having a cookout, Design*Sponge has your table decor covered! What an awesome way to reuse an old six pack holder and spruce up your picnic table all at once!

<3

So SuperCute! is scheming a little literature area for our booth at Inman Park this weekend. We asked some folks around town who we love if they’d like us to put out fliers, brochures or business cards for them, and we have a bunch coming in! Obviously, we needed a supercute way to display all these goodies! We did a little brainstorming and remembered this awesome hard blue suitcase that we’d thrifted and decided that would be just perfect. All we needed to do was add a place to stick folks’ info, and we’d be set!

This afternoon, I sifted through my fabric, pulled out my pinking shears and embroidery thread and got to work! I turned the top of a pillowcase into a literature holder by sewing it into a pouch and then sewing up the middle, so it can hold 2 sets of stuff! Then, I used embroidery thread to whip-stitch the pouch to the existing one in the suitcase. Voila! A totally adorable display!

Some of the blue patches are covering up little blemishes in the suitcase’s lining, while others are just evidence of my love for those pinking shears! Regardless, I can’t wait to set this little baby up in our booth! Whee!

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Liz, Lori and I got together last night to churn out shopping bags for the upcoming Inman Park Festival. After sort of staring at our box of newspaper for a while, we came to some conclusions. The main thing we realized was that folks were more likely to hang on to and continue to use shopping bags if they were made of fabric instead of paper. So! We scrapped the paper idea for now. Instead, we made superquickie cloth bags! Lori posted an awesome tutorial over at SuperCute! on how it all went down.

Then, this morning we got really excited about fleshing out some stuff on the SuperCute! site. We put together a few pages explaining things like What’s With the Mustaches? and talking about our Mission: Possible! project. I’m pretty much overjoyed with how this stuff is going!!

I’ve mentioned here before that I sometimes get overwhelmed. It happens less lately. Whenever that feeling starts to creep up, I throw some energy at SuperCute! or sift through my fabric stash for something to sew. Sometimes, though, that doesn’t do it. No Impact Man sort of addressed this feeling in his posttoday:

…sometimes, the question of whether we can make a difference or not may be the wrong question. I think another line of inquiry might just as productively go like this: Do I want to be the kind of person who tries or the kind of person who doesn’t?

Yes!!! I think that’s what it all boils down to. It’s not about changing everyone in the whole world….I mean….that’s impossible. It’s about being your best person and living the best way you know how. Why waste energy worrying about what you can’t change? It isn’t worth it when there is so much you can.

Tonight, Liz, Lori, possibly Ally and I are getting together to do some crafting! We have a pretty ambitious plan involving 3 projects! We miiiighttt not have time for all of them, but I promise to take some pics of whatever we get done!

<3

We were working on a page for the SuperCute! blog about Craftivism. It’s something we write about/talk about/think about a lot, and I think it will help if folks can click over to a page to see what the heck we mean when we toss that term around. I think it’s a word that means different things for different folks, so we are each writing a little blurb about what it means for us. Here’s mine:

For me, craftivism means taking used and vintage materials and giving them a new life. It means finding earth-friendly ways to package my goods and to promote my business. Sometimes, it feels like no matter what I do, it’s never enough. Rather than let those feelings get me down, I try to channel them into my work and am always striving to do better and better. Craftivism for me means empowerment.