Paper Art

paper hearts sewed down the middle and thumb tacked to the wall

I have always been drawn to paper, to stationary, journals, note pads, books, to post-its, ephemera, museum guides, maps, and old photographs. But my love for paper is doing battle with my desire to minimize and reduce rather than recycle. Last year I also challenged myself to Use it Up - that is, use what I had rather than bring more and new things into my life. Enter Paper Art. I needed some artwork in my living room, above the TV, and made the paper heart strands above. I made a little springtime wreath from egg cartons (I promise it doesn't look all that much like a 3rd grader made it...) and another from the pages of an old book. I also made a Christmas card from the pages of that old book. Paper is a beautiful, plentiful and diverse media for so many projects. I doubt I will get rid off all my paper, but I'm trying, one art project at a time....

Plarn - Plastic Yarn

plarn rug in the making

My Grandma Rose raised 5 kids as a single mom during the Depression. They didn't have much and nothing went to waste. I admire the ethic that was borne of this hardship. My cousin Jackson and I discovered a shared love of our dear Grandma and of crochet. That comes together in the form of plastic yarn, or plarn. His work is tidy and patterned while mine is free formed and a lot less perfect. I'm pretty sure Grandma is smiling down on both. 

Plarn is easy enough to make as shown in this video. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Plarn is quite forgiving, even if the strips are not all the same thickness it works fine.
• If you don't mind a mottled look you can mix various colors and even thicknesses of bags.
• Stick to a simple stitch, because the plarn is thicker it's harder to keep up with fancy stiches.
• Once you tell people you need bags they are more than happy to save them for you, you can even get them directly from Target or your grocery store if you want a uniform look.
• Plarn lends itself to projects that require water proofing such as a soap dish, scrubbie, dog mat for the car, coaster, beach bag, picnic blanket, outdoor rug, and Grandma Rose's ever classic bathmat and kitchen sink rug!

If you are the least bit crafty I challenge you to take up crochet with plarn - get some projects going and then teach someone else how. If we all do our little bit, it makes a difference. 

Plastic Mesh - Reuse

My first posts come off as kind of boring now that I look at them, so I thought I'd share this quick little project to reuse and upcycle plastic mesh from various produce purchases. These were from citrus and potato sacks, plus some strips of plastic bag (the white) and mesh from a packaged turkey (the green). There are several ways you could put these little bits of engineered plastic to good use, such as a gift/bow decoration, or other crafty project, but I decided to make a scrubbie for my kitchen. I lay about 10 of them flat, put a zip tie in the middle and tightened it up as much as I could. Then it was a matter or fluffing and shaping with scissors - kind of like pom poms, remember those? I've used this little scrubbie for over a year now and it works great. I'm still saving mesh and have enough for the replacement when that's needed. What do you think?