Showing posts with label upcycling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label upcycling. Show all posts

Saturday 31 January 2015

Making a refillable traveler's journal


As most of you already know; I am a witch. I celebrate the Wheel of the Year, I follow the basic commandment of 'An it harm ye none, do what thou wilt', I believe in the three-fold law and I collect information. Being a witch is (for me) about learning new things and exploring new ways of looking at life. Being a crafty witch, I make my own tools.
One of the most important tools a witch has is her (or his) books, they hold the tiny crumbs of wisdom and knowledge we manage to gain in our life and can be passed on to another witch to use once we die. I make my own books; one for every new 'subject' (although they all interlock in some way); I made a massive, red leather, hard covered, parchment filled tome for my Book of Shadows (tools, correspondences and rituals); I made a cute little upholstery fabric covered book to record my life changing journey through the Sacred Cord (sort of like a rosary that takes two and a half years to complete); I made a black suede, hard covered slim lined book to record my divinations and dreams (Tarot, runes, iChing, scrying, etc); I made a decorated hardwood, post bound tome for my Tarot learnings (meanings, correspondences, Kabbalah and, layouts, etc) and now I have made a versatile, refillable, black leather traveller's journal for my Kabbalah learnings.

My first Book of Shadows

My Sacred Cord book

My divination book

The cover of my Tarot book
Inside my Tarot book



Because I used what I could find about the house, my journal is a rough item, but I am fairly pleased with it. The first thing I did was; make a cup of coffee (essential to the creative juices), then I got down to business. I wanted the pages to look old and worn so I found a ream of photocopy paper, carefully folded each page in half (not the whole ream, only about 32 pages), dipped each one individually in strong instant coffee and laid them out on a towel to dry. This makes the pages unpredictably brownish yellow with blotches (perfect for that aged look).

My instant coffee bath


Some of the pages laid out to dry


You can see the difference in colour between the new paper on the left and the coffee stained stuff on the right.

While the pages dried, I dug out an old leather skirt (it was the eighties OK) and cut a piece that was  2 cm or so higher than the folded A4 paper (A5 size page) and 6 cm or so wider than an open sheet of A4 paper (A4 size page). The leather was fairly thin and would have been too floppy for a book cover on its own so I also cut a piece of heavy duty interfacing and some pretty orange material the same size as my leather.


Old leather skirt

Heavy duty interfacing on top of the material square

These three sheets were glued together with the interfacing in the middle, clamped and hung to dry for a while.

My cover drying in the breeze.

While the cover dried I began making the note book to go inside this cover. I followed the clip below to the letter, but my finished print block was much messier than hers. Undeterred, I decided it added to the antique-y charm of the project and used it anyway. Unfortunately I didn't take photos of this step (I got lost in the process and forgot what I was doing).



I then trimmed the outside edges and punched some holes in my cover and threaded hat elastic through them in the sequence described in the clip below.



Here is the inside of my cover with the elastic in place.

Next I simply threaded my text block into the elastic holders and it was finished.

Spot the dog loved it; a leather paw rest, how innovative.

Then I started filling it up with collected bits of understandings and knowledge.

The three elastic bits mean I can add another two text blocks as I fill the original one up.

I loved making this project, I think I will make some more soon.

Somewhere down the track, I have plans of making my two daughters a book each and fill them with little snippets of information I think they may need, the sort of thing you ring your mum for...like;
'How do I unplug the bathroom drain..without putting my fingers in there?'
'How do I make pancakes?'
'Is it better to close the windows in a wind storm or leave them open?'
'Where do I go to register to vote?'
'How do I make soap?'
'What herbs are good for a cold?'

and many others.

Maybe one of these journals would be appropriate for that, new books can be added as more questions arise.

What do you think of this project?
Do you like the old and battered look for books and journals?

Monday 13 October 2014

What we do to reduce our carbon footprint



We all want to reduce our carbon footprint...right?
Well when you live like we do here in our little humpy, the usual advice doesn't always apply.
There are thousands of 'Reduce your carbon footprint' sites on the internet, mostly giving the same advice. Have a look at just a few;
Australian Museum
COTAP
Green Wiki
Mashable

In general the advice seems to be;
Reuse and Recycle what you can (already doing that)
Eat less red meat (I think once a week qualifies as less)
Drink tap water rather than bottled water (check)
Buy less and buy to last (That's us all over)
Use less heating and cooling (no air conditioners here)
Use less electricity (ours is solar so it doesn't apply)
Wash in cold water (There's a hot water option?)
Don't fly as much (We can't reduce this; we don't fly)
Don't drive as much and use public transport (I don't drive and go everywhere on the school bus)
Shop locally, especially fresh foods (Yep)
Grow some vegetables at home (Yep)


What do we do to reduce our carbon footprint?

We use solar power only, no grid electricity. We do use a generator once a week though.

We collect all our own water via a roof and tank system, we use very little fuel to pump the water up to a header tank to supply the house via gravity feed.

We don't buy anything we don't need and all our groceries come from the local Co- Op.

We have a vegetable garden, which could be better but I'm working on it.

I don't drive, I go everywhere on the local school buses or car pool. My partner does have a car for work though.

We sort our rubbish carefully and reuse everything we can and recycle everything we can. Making eco bricks with soft drink bottles and plastic rubbish has been a big step forward in this area. So has our use of old tyres for construction materials.

Of this list there are one or two things we could do better;

My partner has a four wheel drive for work, it uses a LOT of fuel in the course of his working week; we do need to invest in a more fuel efficient vehicle so he can go about the countryside saving carbon (he installs solar electricity systems) AND producing less carbon. I wish there was a work horse type vehicle available in an electric option with a range greater than 200 km.

At the moment we use gas for refrigeration, I would like to change this to an electric fridge (and I dream of a freezer) but that will require double the solar panels we have now, a new set of batteries and maybe a new inverter (the thing that changes 12 Volt power to 240 Volt power).

We run our generator on petrol; it is used once a week for four hours to charge the batteries (just an extra boost) while I do the washing as the washing machine uses too much power to run on solar (although a bigger inverter would fix that problem). To get away from this fuel use we would need to either upgrade our inverter or build/buy a hand operated washing machine. I am swayed towards building a hand operated machine myself, but like all hand operated things it needs more time to do things that way. Maybe when I am finished studying....

What do you do to reduce your carbon footprint?
What else can we do to reduce ours? Ideas welcome.

Saturday 11 October 2014

A new yarn swift - home made

What is a yarn swift?
Well...you know when you are watching a movie in the evening and decide to ball up some yarn for a new project you are just dying to knit? The inevitable problem is to get someone (partner, visitor, small child, family dog) to hold the skein while you ball up the yarn. Nobody wants to do it so you end up trying to ball from a skein hung over two chair legs or over your own feet (which is a bit like yoga) leading to knots and snarls (knots in the yarn, snarls on your face). A yarn swift is a mechanical helper who will hold the yarn steady for you whenever you like while you make cute little balls of knitting materials.

I guess my mostly absent partner got very tired of being met at the door by arm loads of skeins because he made me a swift.

First we did a bit of internet research to find the right design;



Then the building began...

He built pretty much to the instructions in the clip (the difference between us... I can't follow instructions).

The base is a piece of spare ply

Finding the centre to drill the hole

Drilling the hole

The bolt thingy in the base for the arms to swing around.

A spacer so the arms aren't too close to the base.

Sawing the arms to the right length

The arms are notched so they sit level with each other

See

Drilling the hole right through the middle


A bit of copper pipe in the middle holds it all together

Yes...it spins

The finished unit. Thanks Hon


Tuesday 22 July 2014

What to do with old sheets - making pajama pants


We seem to have lots of old ripped sheets. We buy all our sheets at second hand stores and although we buy the least worn ones they still seem to wear out on a regular basis; getting thin in the middle and developing little tears on the edges. So what to do with all these sheets?

One thing I do with mine is to make pajama pants from the still good outer edge of the sheet.

To make a pattern, I picked apart an old pair of cotton pants that had also worn out. Once they were picked apart at the seams the pants revealed themselves to be just four pieces the same shape and size, sewn together. So I used one quarter as a guide to cut out my pattern pieces (four of them) and allowed about two centimetres extra around the outside as a seam allowance.

I followed this really handy tutorial (without the cuffs added) to sew them up on my old Singer 201; Prudence. I love my old treadle machine, she is straight stitch only but she doesn't use electricity and sews quietly with a strong stitch.
My old treadle sewing machine; Prudence. Made in 1936 and still sewing strong.


My new pajama pants, made from an old flannelette sheet


The rest of the sheet has become cleaning rags, animal bandaging and strips for making rag rugs (depending on the quality of the material).

What do you do with your old sheets?

Tuesday 8 July 2014

Upcycling an old chest of draws into a garden feature



After a cold morning spent drinking coffee and googling garden upcycling  ideas on my phone, I decided to use an old chest of draws from the 'to burn' pile as a useful garden feature. My daughter and I dragged it around to where we wanted it, lined the draws with builders plastic (also reclaimed), filled them with chook compost and potting mix and planted some Johnny Jump Ups in them. We also sprinkled around some seeds for Love in the Mist (Nigella), calendula (pot marigold) and marigolds to add some more colour to the mix.





We also planted out some old terracotta pots with flower seedlings and seeds and left them lying artfully around. I must say the entire experience was very satisfying.

Until recently I have not been a flowers person; I prefer to grow food and herbs, but lately I find myself drawn to colour and flowers in the garden. Maybe I'm getting old.

I can imagine this feature spilling over with green, purple and yellow in a month or so, can you?