Recycled Nescafe Jar

Have I already mentioned that Pinterest is addicting? Man, it seriously is! I find myself pinterest-ing every.single.night. Once the little one starts to do her little snores, I'd take my mobile and put myself under the blanket and start browsing through the bazillion ideas one can find in the sweet addicting world of Pinterest.  Yes, it could be possible that I am losing sleep because of too much Pinterest-ing.

Anyhoo... as I was browsing and pinning, I found this work of a really artsy man named Eric Barclay.  One of his works is this:

Isn't this too adorable??? I tell you, the guy is full of creativity and talent!

And since this is about recycling (I've been very gung-ho about recycling but just couldn't find time) and by a very, very good chance, I have one empty Nescafe bottle lying around the house, I said I must try this! 

And here is the result of my wannabee-artist work.  I know, it's far (like oceans afar!) from Eric's work but hey, the colors I used are all I have at the time AND I swear, my hand wouldn't just stop from trembling while I was trying to paint the bottle.  I don't really know what I was so nervous about.  And that crackled effect near the whites... and what's going on with the white?  Looks like I used a liquid paper.  I tell you I did not.  I used a super old white paint marker... but I guess it's already super old, that's why.

 

 

But I am still happy with the outcome.  My striped cat turned out cute in its own unique style, yes?  Maybe I'd get better on the next ones.  Maybe I should also get nicer colors to use, yeah? I still have to think of what to store in it.  For now,  it holds small knick-knacks in the kitchen.  But it should find a better purpose.  Maybe nuts? Or Sugar perhaps?  What would you use a bottle like this for?

 

 

Wordless Wednesday: I'm going to pAAAaaaaaaiiiiIIIIint!

DIY: Pistachio Shells Wall Art

So one day, I was happily munching on my pistachios.  They are one of my many simple pleasures.  I started looking at the pistachio shells and thought it's such a same that they end up on garbage pit.  I thought they look pretty, sturdy, uniform so there must be something that can be done to re-use them. I thought of consulting the internet - perhaps other people have such great idea about how to recycle pistachio shells and surely, the internet didn't disappoint me.  It's just amazing how much info one can find from the internet.

I browsed on different ideas until one clicked for me.  This girl makes flower brooches out of pistachio shells and they are just lovely.  I was so sure I can do it... but I have a bigger idea. Literally.  Instead of making flower brooch, I made a big flower wall art.  Our entrance hall has been bare from the beginning we moved in our house up until now for reasons like 1 - not having an idea how I'd want it to look like 2 - no desire on spending significant ka-chings and 3 - lack of time.

Lately though, I've been obsessing on doing small projects in our house for organization and decoration and this is one of them!  So let's move on to the presentation because if I don't stop talking er, writing now, I will never stop, ever. I am a very, very wordy person.

Pistachio shells painted in red, red wine.

Pistachio shells painted yellow mustard

One on top of the other

Full view of the pistachio wall art together

Our entrance hall is still a work-in-progress.  This mama loves anything handmade, thrifty, unique and pretty so I've been trying to incorporate some DIYs to really personalize our entrace hall.  These pistachio flower wall arts are perfect for this wall that yours truly painted :)

Showing some more details on our entrance hall.

A different angle.  Some details from right to left:

yellow and green vases - from a thrift store. They were like less than a euro each

book type picture frame in natural wood and green color - a souvenir we got from Dos Palmas back in 2004

White picture frame - gift from MIL

Lantern made of candle (leftmost) - craft from Kultura store in the Philippines

This is probably too girly for a house but I got an approval from hubby before I have installed them and I also got a wow so I guess, there's really nothing to worry :)

So there.  I am really liking how the entrance hall is turning into something we really like.  Paging Dianne:  I still have a space in our entrance hall for your DIY Chicago skyline framed art :-D

Now, let me bore you a little bit with my thought process while I do this craft: {I tried to sort out the not-so-pretty and not-so-perfect pistachio shells because what else, I'd like the end-result to look perfect. After all, it'll be hanged on the wall of our entrance hall. Then as I continued working...}

I told myself:

 "Poor unpretty pistachio shells. They have even failed this 'second chance' of being useful. Now, they have no use at all. Off to the garbage can!"

Then I answered myself:

 "That's not really fair isn't it?

To which, I answered back:

 "That's right. That is not fair. Just because something doesn't look perfect, doesn't mean they should be deprived of opportunities." Then the reflection continued. I Imagined children getting outcast by other children because they are not 'pretty'. I imagined my daughter not wanting to play with another child because the child is 'different'. How will I teach my child against prejudice? About equality? About giving the same chance to everybody? If I myself don't even know how to give the same chance to these not-so-pretty pistachio shells in front of me?

Then I heard myself telling me: "Ok. Enough gluing. You need some rest."

So I had to stop the gluing of these pistachio shells as they were starting to come alive in my mind.

I sat on the couch and ate some more pistachios.

Can you tell I am nutty?

Wordless Wednesday: Coming Soon...

cooking in my craft table a.k.a dining table

DIY: Rolled Magazine Pages Part 2

So here's what I have promised.

I'm really excited to share this because I reeeeeaaaallllly loved the output. As an introduction, I like to show this picture:

Pay attention to the spice rack on the sides of the microwave. Yes, that black poor little square thing in the middle is a microwave oven.  The books on top are small recipe books.  Placed in there to also fill in the space.

When we moved in to our own place, this area of the kitchen is empty.  Microwave oven is not included in the kitchen when it was turned over to us.  Our old microwave is too small for the this particular spot and thus, it looked awful.  Hubby told me we'll have to buy a new one.  I gasped and huffed and puffed and eyes wide open (wider than they are already are), I gave him a big resonating NOOOO! There is no way we are changing a fully functioning microwave oven just because it doesn't look good (read: too small) in its space.

I told him I'll do something to fill in those gaps.  So long story short, I made those spice racks that are custom-fit on the sides of the microwave to fill in the space.  They are just made out of hard cardboard recycled from boxes I took from the street along my walks (like a crazy lady).  Then the outside is covered with cork (the one basically used for corkboards) and the sides are decorated by none other than pasta! They are chipping away now by the way so it's actually time to replenish or change them :)

While I can say it can pass as a clever idea, it's not all good because since the spice rack is directly above the oven, sometimes the heat can go up and harm the spices.  Not all of them are affected though but once, I had a cheese powder tucked in one of the holes of this spice rack (the one that is nearest the oven I suppose) and over time, it has hardened and became unusable.  Plus, the hole for each spice is customed according to the bottle so when I had to replenish the spice, sometimes I'd get a different brand and thus, different bottle size - result: the hole that was created for the old spice may become too small or too big for the new one.  Lastly, the number of spices it can hold is just not enough.

This introduction is getting longer than I have planned.... ok... so comes in this problem.  We love spices and we have a good number of them which obviously, do not fit these two spice racks.  So they are practically all over my kitchen. And everytime I need to use one of them... ahh, it's a jungle out there.

Then I got inspired by Stay at Home-ista.  She's very clever on home organization and I am just the complete opposite.  For a whole day, I drooled over her spice drawer:

This picture is taken straight from her blog with her permission of course!

 

and I wondered how it was done.  I can see through the spaces in between that those elevated whatchamacallit is made of wood.  I am no carpenter and definitely haven't tried my skill on cutting wood... so I just let out an exasperation.  There is no way,  I can do this!  Then I had the light bulb moment!

Rolled magazine pages! It may work... so I started rolling magazine pages once again and with much patience, the whole plan started to materialize.

These are the magazine papers rolled into strips.

Applying the same concept I did for the garbage bin and magazine rack, I came up with this:

They are like elevated slanted platforms piled on top of each other by their foot.

It fit nicely on the kitchen drawer I chose to dedicate for spices.

It wasn't a one sitting or an overnight thing though. It required patience, waiting and finger-cramp-provoking activity but ALL is worth it.  The result is really beautiful (according to my beauty catergory).

So, behold!

I even got an extra space for some of my baking thingies.

I would love to share the how-to of this project but that should be on a different post as it may be a really long post.  I might also need to put short videos of the step as they are kind of difficult to describe just by words. I'm not making it sound complicated it's just that sometimes my english words are not enough to express my thoughts  ;-)

Anyone who is interested to learn on how to do this, just holler!

DIY: Rolled Magazine Pages Part 1

Warning:  This post is picture heavy!!

I love crafting and I love recycling.  I think I've mentioned this many a times already but I just don't have much time and resources (and sometimes creativity) to do much work on crafting AND recycling or repurposing.  There are times though that I get really inspired and be happy with my creation. 

One of the things I have done which I will basically discuss here is the use of rolled magazine pages.  I really am happy with the result and the usability of what I have done with an added bonus of being able to recycle, so I am definitely sharing this to all of you.

Back in 2008, I created a garbage bin out of rolled magazine paper.  Sick of too many magazines at home, but didn't really want to throw them all at once (out of concern for Mother Earth), I tried to think of what use I can make of them.  I came up with these:

The first two are being used now as garbage can  - one is in one of our bathrooms and the other (brown) is used to contain all old bulbs and/or used batteries that will be thrown in the proper place once the bin is already full.  Important note:  we do really need to mind throwing these things in the proper place and not together with the biodegradable wastes as these things can be toxic to the environment.  The last one (white) is as you can see being used as magazine rack.  Magazine for magazine rack - ain't that cool?

I've also done this out of the same materials:

Drawer space separator (is that even called that way? I am thinking I just invented this term) for utensils. I emptied one of the section/basket to show how it looks like.

A closer look.  It is made by weaving the rolled magazine pages.  Much like a basket.

I loved the idea because 1. I am recycling (I know I am being too repetitive about this) and 2. I can customize it and fit it according to the sections and sizes I need for my drawer. 

Then there's the latest project I just made that  I am extremely happy about - which I will be posting soon.  Hint:  It includes spices!