Showing posts with label eco friendly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eco friendly. Show all posts

10.02.2012

10.2.12 ... eco happy napkins

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i started making these muslin napkins with recycled fabric patches a while back. 
these photos are from a custom order.


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the appliques are on both sides with the fabrics complimenting one another. 
it's a lot of fun choosing the bits and matching them up.


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they are rather time consuming so i have decided that 
i may not continue to offer them, but, 
am giving it a little more of a trial run.


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financially they may not have a sensible pay off but they are good for my creative soul. 
that's something. do you have conflicted feelings about your projects and ideas?


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i'll be back again in a few days with either tales from the road or workshop.

thanks for stopping by. until next time. 
happiness to you. from me. with heart. 

ox joon

7.19.2012

7.19.12 ... new ironing board cover & vintage Made in America overalls

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it will come as no surprise to you that my ironing board came from a neighbor's trash day heap. nicest ironing board i've ever had. cannot believe people put perfectly good items for the trash truck and fill up our dumps. the flip side of that is people who have absolute rotting crap stored in their garages and homes. but, onward... i think ironing board covers are designed - and i use that term so loosely - by the same people who design linoleum, wallpaper and sofa fabrics. they have a problem, but not nearly as big a problem as the industry that supports this bizarre phenomenon. but, again, i digress. long story short, i make my own covers because environment is everything and ugly is just plain unacceptable. 

i love to iron. but even if i didn't i would need to in order to sew, which i also love. and life is way too short to look at one of those vile designs every day. i had a wonderful cover i'd made out of peanuts character baseball theme fabric. that was probably six years and five moves ago so you can imagine the state it was in. it was time to say goodbye. (although i do have it in my laundry pile just in case it will clean up well enough to work as a pile of cleaning rags or something.) this one is made from a wonderful heavy cotton shower curtain - the kind you'd use with a separate liner. i found it at a thrift store. brand new. 

this one is cheery and reminds me that this is the time in our life when we live by the zoo and visit it ridiculously often. i hope it lasts a long, long time. but i have a lot more of this fabric so i think i am set for my little glimpse of eternity here on our beautiful swirling blue planet.

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my first project was hemming three pairs of pants that i found, of course, at the thrift store. i was looking for overalls for my sweet cousin. i didn't find any for her - yet - but i found two pair for me. 

this pair blows me away because i had forgotten about these painter's overalls that were all the thing in the 1970/80s. this pair has never been worn and its trip to the laundromat with me was its first. i think these were 1.99 (before my 'senior' discount) and i can't wait until they wear in. 

i plan to start on that endeavor immediately.


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this is another view of my new cover. and what do you think of my sewing scissors? dusty gave them to me and they are one of my favorite treasures. i love scissors and collect them. this pair is at the top of my ron swanson-ish scissor pyramid. 

i am not sure using a pair of scissors should infuse one with the level of happiness these do but i have to be honest and say if you owned a pair of these your life happiness meter would jump off the chart. just saying sometimes i have an edge over my peers. 

this is one of those times.


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the other pair of overalls is seen here on top of the stack. it is also a wonderful find. it's a great cotton fabric with a favorite fine woven grid-like texture that i have only seen one other time, lightweight and soft as butter but will last me forever. it was a very lucky thrift day for me.

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i wish we would find this on most of the clothing in our stores. 

but. alas. 

all the more reason this is such a superior thrift find. and why i am drawn to the thrifting addiction. could be much worse. by the way, scout and i picked up 400 pieces of litter last week. that was a great feeling of accomplishment and good deed-ism. 

thanks for stopping by. until next time. happiness to you. from me. with heart. 

ox joon


4.16.2011

4.16.11 ... recycling envelope sticker flaps

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...continued from yesterday when i told you i had a genius idea. i cannot believe i never thought of this before now. i always recycle safety envelopes and all other junk mail envelopes. what am i saying? i recycle every envelope no matter how plain or fancy it is. it's an obsessive thing. but the one part i always tossed into recycling was the flap because of the fold and the sticker edge. but yesterday i thought - hey! i can trim those off and turn them into my own stickers for my etsy packages. so here is my first batch. i will slice them into individual stickers as i go. they're easier to find in my drawer as long strips.

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i had fun making these and i know i will be hooked now thinking up a million and one sticker themes for these silly strips. tomorrow is evan's birthday and scout has a long afternoon rehearsal and then ev has a call in the evening so we had his steak dinner tonight, the netflix film 'red' with bruce willis and more - very fun movie - and a chocolate fudge cake. we used a recipe new to us. just one out of the bible of all cookbooks - the better homes and gardens checkered stand by. love that thing. the cake is delightful. 

sweet dreams, everyone. thanks for stopping by. until tomorrow. happiness to you. from me. with heart. ox joon

2.27.2011

2.27.11 ... homemade stickers gone backwards


i had a little bit of my homemade sticker glue left and wanted to use it up before it turned into a possible creature from another planet. hey, you never know. this time i grabbed a handful of paper scraps i'd been saving and applied the sticker glue to a few pre-made stamps, but mostly plain pieces of paper.


it was fun stamping afterword and i plan to try this again soon. the glue had gotten quite thick but now when i make a fresh batch i will know i can use it all up quickly and make the illustrations and designs after.


the 'you make it happen' pieces are from spam junk mail envelopes. save our planet. it's satisfying to turn a major cultural negative into a positive. once again, who needs algebra? sweet dreams, everyone. thanks for stopping by. until tomorrow. happiness to you. from me. with heart. ox joon

2.15.2011

2.15.11 ... 1930 era greeting card magnets


i have a collection of very old - 1920s - 30s - greeting cards that my lovely and wonderful sister sent me. i have only used a few of them over the past year or so that i've had them because i find they don't lend themselves to reincarnation easily. at least i am finding them challenging. but today i made these magnets by piecing a few things together in creative ways. i think they came out pretty sweet.


i will list them in my joonbeam etsy shop. and... last but not least... the valentine cookies i promised to show you. they are so delicious.


and pretty, too, don't you think?
sweet dreams, everyone. thanks for stopping by. until tomorrow. happiness to you. from me. with heart. ox joon

2.02.2011

2.2.11 ... recovered rolling chair


i find myself telling you all two things over and over. one: there was no sunshine for photos today and two: i've been wanting to do X, Y or Z forever. today is no different. my project falls under both categories. we've had this secondhand rolling chair for years and it was an assault to my senses every.single.day. with evan's help it has finally been recovered to my heart's content. i do wish the photos were better. here is the before picture from a few months ago when i put it on craigslist. no one responded.  now i am very, very happy!


i rest my case.
this fabric is designer upholstery fabric. i bought a large piece at a thrift store in 2005 for 2.25. I love it. these photos do not do it justice. hopefully you can see through their failings.


i have this tote in my joonwalk shop that i made with this fabric. you can see how beautiful it is...


i promised to show you my kitchen towel patch and mend so here you go. the fish patch is on both sides and is a recycled t shirt from scoutie's toddler days. i mended the edge using a neckline bit from a t shirt to create a false edge.


here's hoping you are warm and dry tonight. ciao for now.


sweet dreams, everyone. thanks for stopping by. until tomorrow. happiness to you. from me. with heart. ox joon

2.01.2011

2.1.11 ... feelin' loopy


here is my bag of potential loops. i've been adding loops to the corners of all our kitchen and bath hand towels because we don't have a rack in either room. which is fine with me because i love that there's a legitimate need for my super magnet hooks. do you have any of those? these are the kind that will suspend a small elephant with ease. a few hand towels are not going anywhere is what i am saying. anyway, here is my recycled stash and here are the loops i made this afternoon:


i also mended a sizable hole in the striped towel but will have to photo it tomorrow. i am almost done with mend #2 on that one. in other creative news, i did not meet my goal of publishing my first zine by the end of january. there's always february. here is my miniature dummy. it's so cute i know i will find inspiration looking at it on my desk.


and lastly, for today here is a little package i had fun preparing today. i've been saving the pasta bag for an embarrassingly long time and was so happy to find just the right item for it. {it's a vintage #5 house number}

 


oh - i forgot about the lunch quiche i made at scout's request.  here it is before and after baking:




sweet dreams, everyone. thanks for stopping by. until tomorrow. happiness to you. from me. with heart. ox joon

1.23.2011

1.23.11 ... exploding art collage


i was introduced to this project when i returned to college the first time. it was 1987-ish and i was working on an elementary education degree. one of my classes was about the art of teaching art from K-8 and we made these wonderful notebooks - scrapbook style - with 100 art projects inside {if you wanted an A} so we'd have it as a resource. at the time, i thought it was a crazy idea and insane amount of busy work {i did have three young boys to mother} but that scrapbook is one of my favorite things and i love looking through it for inspiration. over the years i have made excellent use of it both when i taught and for myself and my family. it brings back many fond memories and i find the old fashioned look of the lesson copies - they're all typewritten with simple hand drawn illustrations - charming.


i used two of my favorite discarded children's books to create this piece. the scene slices were in my stash. i had cut up the book in a variety of ways, mostly different sized strips. today i happened to locate a couple that matched up and that inspired me to do an exploding scene if i could find enough that went together. i spent a very long time locating them, but enjoyed myself. we listened to pandora windham hill. quite pleasant. the background piece is from another book. i love how well they compliment one another. the serendipity factor is very high. and i love that.


the background is also collaged a bit, the end slices are not in synch with the main scene on purpose and i used the sticker glue since i had it handy. i made another small batch of stickers but they weren't done drying by the time i had to run outside for my usual catch-the-twilight, freeze-and-cross-my-fingers-that-a-few-photos-will-work. i hope you enjoy today's creation. have you ever done one of these? i think you'd like it. i know i will do more throughout the year. they are always so individually unique there's no way you could tire of the process or results. let me know if you try it. i'd like to see what you do.

sweet dreams, everyone. thanks for stopping by. until tomorrow. happiness to you. from me. with heart. ox joon

1.15.2011

1.15.11 ... valentine bookmarks

i have this fabulous old literature textbook and i haven't used it as i intended - for recycled art - because we got all caught up in reading so much of it! pretty funny. nifty stuff, actually. as you can see here the graphics are pretty charming. these bookmarks are made using one full page folded in half. i placed a piece of manila cardstock in between for strength, stitched them using two complimentary color blue/teal threads, left my signature thread tails on one upper corner and signed them both on one side. i left the ripped edges because i like that kind of thing. what do you think of that design choice? the one bookmark has a poem from twelfth night and it says that the piece of music that accompanies it is the only surviving one. there's your trivia for the day. the other is a christopher marlowe. again, please pardon the photo quality or lack thereof. it's been pouring all day and i had to take these in the hallway under a light. it's the best i can do. i also did some handstitched mending which can be seen as well. one of a smartwool sock i've had for centuries and the other is a shirt sleeve from the t shirt i refashioned and posted about on an earlier date.




i worked quite a bit on my zine this evening. it's coming along nicely now. hope you're all well and warm this evening. 
sweet dreams, everyone. thanks for stopping by. until tomorrow. happiness to you. from me. with heart. ox joon

9.29.2010

New JoonWalk Recycled Bookmark Design


my new fold*over magnetic bookmarks


covers are laminated 
magnets on lower inside covers hold your place


my first batch





some have handwritten quotes on back
the coca cola and clapper board, for instance


vintage gift wrap, stamp collage & book illustrations
are a few of my set themes


this pair features my original artwork





















so what do you think?

look for these in my joonwalk shop

ox
joon