Last week I blogged about how to avoid accepting plastic grocery bags by making and taking your own, and I also provided some links to quirky projects which recycle the plastic bags you just can’t get away from. Marlo’s Crochet Corner provides us with an ingenious combination of the two…
When you start looking into the statistics of world wide plastic bag usage it’s all quite alarming. Australians alone use a staggering 6.9 billion plastic bags each year (326 per person) and world wide it is now estimated that consumption is at well over 500 billion plastic bags annually (1 million per minute).
While more and more stores are providing cheap, reusable shopping bags in an effort to cut down on the waste, there are still many more who aren’t. So obviously the solution is to take your own–and make your own!
Like many great artists and craftspeople before her, Lizette Greco takes the drawings and artwork of children (mostly from her own kids - now aged 5 and 6) and turns them into appealing little plush toys, cool accessories and homewares.
There are so many great craft blogs to be found these days–practically a blog for every craft that can be brought to mind. Bringing it all together is the fabulous new Whipup.net. A team of 19 craft-bloggers, led by the industrious Kathreen Ricketson, post several times daily with good handmade things to be found from around the Web; ideas, projects, artist profiles, and beautiful objects. The archives are already busting at the seams with great finds.
Rob (from the What is It? blog of curios) has published a great how-to for a constructing a very simple model of the 1960s game Bing Bang Bong. A ball bearing is launched from a ramp and then bounces off a series of small peanut-can trampolines across the room. He has shot a short video of the game in action, and the sound of the metal bearings hitting the surface of the little drums is enough to tempt you to make one.
Here in Australia, where drought is now part of everyday life, especially in these Summer months, reducing water use is a high priority for the entire community. But it’s not only the arid countries that need to be thinking about conservation–12 percent of the world’s population uses 85 percent of its water, and while the bulk may be consumed by farming and industry, there is much we can do as domestic users. With that in mind, I took to the web to find some cheap and easy water-saving tips.
