Tuesday 20 September 2011

Joining The Trail of Recycling and Re-using Items

Rhonda has blogged today about the serious need to reduce the amount of waste in landfills and dumps all over the world and she asks what tips and ideas do we have to re-use items around the house and garden.

In my garden I have olive oil tin planters....


The webber BBQ kettle is working hard these days holding herbs.....


Old soft drink bottles protect  young trees from the claws of next door's cat...


A discarded watering can has been brightened up with some cheap paint....


Inside the house I re-use glass jars, plastic bags, bubblewrap and boxes of all shapes and sizes. These large tin cans are covered with fabric jacket and pressed into service as utensil holders...


More uses for pretty fabric and old towels...a new bathmat is always welcome...


This one is made of plaited strips of our old t-shirts....almost finished...


New bibs for Baby David from an old towel....


 Lastly here's Georgie The 20c Rabbit again...she's made entirely from re-purposed or gifted materials following a second-hand pattern from the Red Cross shop. Her skirt is part of a vintage pillowcase, other fabrics were in my stash and Tammy sent me the lovely yarn for her cardigan.



Do you have any good ideas along these lines, please leave a link if you want to share how you avoid wasting resources.

Love from Sue
xxx

6 comments:

  1. Love the jacketed cans and the olive oil planters. Oh, and the t-shirt rug too. It's easy to see that you "think before tossing", to get the fullest use of things.

    brenda from arkansas

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  2. Thank you Brenda and welcome here!

    Are the Folger's tins you save made of tin, you could cover them with fabric to make this mini bins...or even glue pretty paper on them.
    xx

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  3. wonderful stuff you are doing, very inspiring.
    Dayla

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  4. Well done Sue...you have given me some ideas...I usually throw those oil cans in the recycle bin even though hubby suggested using them for money tins! Great recycling :)

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  5. i like your t-shirt rug, i just finished one as well.

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  6. Awesome tins... funny I had a similar thought about covering tins recently, but haven't yet carried it through. My daughter made some covered tin can pencil pots last year at the Quilt Show in Birmingham UK... so cute! Love your bright colours.
    I've just made my teenage boy some PJ bottoms out of a charity shop stripey sheet... he loves them so much he wants another pair!!

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