Simple ideas are always the best.

Get green and get out in the fresh air this weekend.

We should all be finding ways of recycling our waste rather than just adding to the landfill mountain.

Here are some simple upcycling ideas that I found for the garden, balcony or yard.

A beautiful use for old wellies. www.sharelandscaping.com

An upright planter, just old plastic bottles and a pallet.

www.ecycler.com

Little messages and

plant markers www.igardena.blogspot.com

I have made these from old charity shop finds, not only upcycling but adding a bit to the charity coffers. To make them you just hammer the spoon flat and scratch in the name, go over the text with a permanent marker and wipe it off before it dries, it will stay in the text.

Lovely little nightlights from old tin cans.

tutorial www.finegardening.com look under how to.

This one is not strictly for the garden but its a simple idea for an organiser, you could of course use it to store your plant labels and tags! Sorry can't remember where I found it.

These are just a few of the many ideas easily found online, so before you throw it away have a surf around and see if you can make it into something beautiful and useful.

Midweek meander. Recycled Gift bag.

When I bought something at a store recently, the clerk handed me my purchase in a bag made from a newspaper. I liked it very much and had to make some more—thus today's DIY recycled newspaper project: gift bags made from the Wall Street Journal. You can vary the dimensions, of course, but here's what I used to create a bag that's 5" tall, 4.5" wide, and 3" deep.

Stack two sheets of newspaper on top of each other. This will be a two-ply bag for extra sturdiness.

Cut out a rectangle that's 15.5" wide and 8.25" tall. If your paper already has a fold in it, align the existing fold with one of the fold lines in the diagram below, unless you don't mind an extra fold appearing somewhere on your bag. I cut out this rectangle, then flipped the paper over so the blue area would be on the outside of the bag.

Fold a flap 1.25" down from the top. Fold a flap 2" up from the bottom. Then measure off and make vertical folds in the places shown in the diagram above. The front and back panels are 4.5" wide, the side gussets are 3" wide, and you'll need a 0.5" flap for gluing the bag together.

Cut two pieces of cardstock or chipboard to 4.25" x 1", then glue them on the widest two panels just under the top fold. These will reinforce the rim of the bag. Glue the top flap down along the length of the bag, covering the cardstock. Since the bag is two-ply, you'll need to glue both flap pieces down one at a time.

Put glue on the outside of the 0.5" tab and bring the left-most panel over to form the body of the bag, aligning the cut edge of the panel with the folded edge of the flap. Add a little more glue to make sure the outermost sheet of newsprint gets tacked down, too.

Upend the bag so the 2" flap is now up. Fold the short sides inward as if you were wrapping a present. If it seems easier, you could also lay the bag on its side and crease those folds against the table.

Put glue on both flaps and fold them inward to form the bottom of the bag. Standing the bag upright and pressing down from the inside will help to secure them.

Cut a piece of chipboard to 4" x 2.5" and glue it to the bottom of the bag to reinforce it and hide the flaps if you want to be an overachiever.

Punch holes in the rim of the bag, adding eyelets if you like, and string some cord through the holes to form handles. Knot each end of the cord so it won't pull out through the holes.

If you want to store your bag flat, pinch the top together, fold in the sides, and bring the bottom up so that it lies flat.

This great blog post is from www.howaboutorange.blogspot.com check it out for lots of interesting stuff.

Art Brut, Outsider Art.

I have always been an avid follower of Outsider Art or Art Brut. Outsider art, if you are wondering is the art of self taught artists who have no formal training, the often strange imagery, immediacy and vitality of this type of work, for me, expresses raw creativity and inner energy which I find very interesting. The expression Art Brut (raw art) was created by the french artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture.

These images are from various contemporary outsider artists across the globe.

'Just missed the Pass'  Artist Micheal Delgado.

'Observe your Choices' Micheal Delgado.

Micheal Delgado is an artist who is originally from Senegal, he now lives in the USA.

Artist Ian Pyper, UK

Ian Pypers work takes doodling to a whole new place.

The wonderful work of Ann Irwin.

 Artist Alexandra Huber from Germany.

'Ladybug and Black man' Alexandra Huber.

'Magic Place' Alexandra Huber.

Magical work from this artist.

To see more of this type of work www.beverlykayegallery.blogspot.com

I hope you enjoyed these as much as I do.

Joana Vascocelos

Piano Dentelle.

Joana Vasconcelos is a French born artist who now lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal. She has exhibited her works around the world in a number of group shows and many solo shows. She primarily creates sculpture and installation pieces.

Many of her key works apply white crochet patterns to a variety of objects like computers, sculptures, pianos and even bridges. The works are completely covered in the crochet, with only the form and negative space to identify the object, ‘piano dentelle’ is the aforementioned crochet covered piano and gives a good impression of the detail in these works.( Text, thanks to www.designboom.com)

No one can deny that these works are beautiful but the work that really does it for me are the large colourful textile instalations. I had often seen the crochet work but had never come across the work below until recently. Its great seeing these 'domestic' skills being excepted as art and being put forward by artists as serious ways of expressing themselves and their art more and more often recently. Finally they seem to be being acepted by the art establishment! 

Contamination. Joana Vasconcelos

I Will Survive.

Sorry for the long post but I just couldn't choose, they are all so inspirational. Want more www.joanavasconcelos.com

Have a great, colourful weekend.

Midweek meander.

Meandering through beautiful choreography.



And from the male perspective? Makes me smile!




Enjoy your sewing machine, make it your friend. Thanks to Ros for this little beauty.



An unusual use of knitting, just to make you think about things.

All Tied Up.

The next two workshops coming up in August at Studio 15 are Stitch and Tie to Dye and Indigo, favorites of mine. Years ago I got into dyeing and patterning cloth because I didn't have the cash to buy the amount of different fabrics I needed to work, so I bought inexpensive calico, muslin, scrim, old cotton bed sheets etc. I soon became addicted to this way of working using every method I could to produce individual designs and colours. When you adopt these processes your cloth is unique and you won't see it anywhere else. I became increasingly fascinated by the beautiful cloths produced across the world using simple techniques to make complex designs and researched as many as I could find, clamping, stitching and tying were included.

Cloth 'tied' with rubber bands and the resulting pattern after dyeing in Indigo.

Stitching to dye.

Target tied cloth and the resulting pattern.

 

The beauty of a complex stitched and tied cloth.

Wonderful, beautiful Shibori cloth.

BOOK NOW via the STUDIO 15 website if you want to learn with us.

Thanks.

More please.

Hi I've had such a good response to the yarn bombing that I thought you might like some more. This is really happening everywhere around the world, textile graffiti that doesn't damage buildings, certainly cheers people up in these austere times! Enjoy.

Prague.

Snow Shed.

Germany.

USA?

Their getting everywhere!

Tankie blankie?

Come on this could be you! Get those needles out again.

Have a creative weekend.