How-To: Recycle Junk Mail into Paper Beads

With just a few pieces of basic equipment, you can turn your boring old junk mail into cute paper beads! These lightweight, bulky beads are great for making fun chunky jewelry, festive garlands, or a bead curtain to hang in your doorway (if you're feeling ambitious!)

Equipment:

- Kitchen blender
- 2 Buckets
- Large bowl or tub
- Sieve
- Awl
- Cutting mat
- PVA (white) glue
- Acrylic gesso
- Acrylic paints
- Clear varnish
- Paintbrushes
- Paper for recycling.

For this tutorial, I loosely packed a 1-gallon bucket about 3/4 full with scraps, which yielded around 100 beads ranging in size from 1/2"-1".

Ideal papers to use: anything printed on standard office paper, business envelopes, take-out menus with a matte finish, kraft paper.

Papers to avoid: glossy or coated papers such as magazine pages, waxed paper, newspapers and phonebooks (the ink is very messy and gross), facial tissue, paper towels.

NOTE: I recommend that you have dedicated equipment for home recycling/papermaking, rather than use the same items you use for food preparation. A good, used blender can easily be found at a thrift shop or yard sale. My rule is: if I use it for papermaking, I don't use it for food.

STEP 1: Tear paper into 1" scraps. Make sure you remove any staples and all plastic windows from business envelopes. Place torn scraps in a bucket, fill with water, and let it soak overnight.

STEP 2: Now it's time to make pulp! Put a couple of handfuls of paper into the blender and fill blender about half-full with water. Blend until the paper has the consistency of oatmeal, about 10 seconds. Place sieve over second bucket, and empty blender into sieve. After the pulp in the sieve has drained a bit, manually squeeze out excess water before transferring pulp to large bowl or tub. Repeat this step until all your scraps have been pulped, drained, and squeezed.

STEP 3: Add a nice big dollop of white glue to the pulp, mixing it in with your hands.

STEP 4: Roll yourself some beads! Take a bit of pulp and roll it into a little ball between your palms. This is the tricky part. If the pulp has too much water in it, it won't hold together. If it has too little water, it will be too crumbly to hold together, and your beads will break apart. Try rolling a couple beads and see how it goes. If the pulp is too wet to hold together, squeeze out more water. If the pulp is too crumbly, add back a little more water and some glue. You'll soon get a feel for the proper consistency, and it's easy to make little adjustments as you go. When in doubt, add more glue!

Once you've formed all your pulp into little balls, let them sit in a nice, out-of-the-way spot until they are dry as a bone.

STEP 5: Put holes in your beads with an awl. Working on a cutting mat to protect your work surface, hold the bead steady between your thumb and forefinger and press the awl slowly and firmly straight down through the bead.

STEP 6: I like to prime my beads with a nice thick coat of undiluted gesso because it helps to smooth over the rough surface. This step isn't absolutely necessary, and you can go straight to decorating your beads with paint, if you want.

STEP 7: Grab your paints and brushes and go nuts!

STEP 8: When the paint is dry, you can brush on a coat of clear varnish to give your new beads a little added protection and shine.

- Lisa H.
parallelbotany.etsy.com

Get Creative in the Office: Reuse and Recycle

As a struggling artist, I have held various temporary office assignments and one thing they all had in common was a tremendous amount of waste. There was so much paper accumulating and being improperly disposed of. Office supplies were reordered even when the shelves were fully stocked. It was impossible to keep up with the amount of paper piling up, but I thought of several ways to do my part and reuse what I could. Here's one thing I did:

We had stacks of interoffice envelopes, which in theory are great because you can keep using them over and over again until all the lines are filled up. I actually liked the patterns that months of different people's signatures and marker cross-outs created, so I hoarded used up inter-office envelopes and created notebooks! It is such a simple concept. I needed notebooks to take notes for my various assignments (and doodles!) and rather than use brand new pads of paper, I made my own.

Simply get a box or tray to store your used paper that has at least one blank side. Once you have a considerable amount to make a notebook, cut your interoffice envelope to the size of your stack of paper. To secure the notebook, I used a 2-hole punch and steel fasteners, which my office had loads of. But you can easily use staples, brads, or even slip rubber bands through the hole punches. And here is the finished product:

Feel free to add any creative recycling solutions you've come up with in the office place!

Molly Shoelace

mshoelace.etsy.com

Using Upcycled Materials

Upcyle is a term generally used to denote the re-use of materials bound for the trash in the creation of new items. It's generally associated with environmentalism as it reduces waste and promotes imaginative recycling. Many {NewNew} members upcycle their materials into wonderfully inventive new pieces that are each unique.

Search "newnewteam, upcycle" on Etsy or look through these featured shops whose products focus on the re-use of materials. In all fairness, I will go alphabetically...

First we have Beadscarf, who focuses her products on re-using vintage scarves and neckties into new accessories. Items can be custom ordered, turning an old scarf with sentimental meaning into an original Beadscarf. I can't think of a better use for wedding ties or grandmas's old scarf to keep the memories alive in such a vibrant way.

Cakehouse also uses only reclaimed materials in her work, breathing new life into vintage bedding to create napkins, place mats and coasters for your home. Further decorated with her signature llama or cat water-based silkscreen, each item merges the old with the new.

As a self-proclaimed "serial obsessive crafter", Groundsel focuses her crafting activities on re-using a wide range of materials to create bags, wallets and tissue cozies. With purses made from upcycled sweaters, or wallets that began their lives as plastic bags, Groundsel brings an environmental consciousness to her crafting.Paperelle uses mainly upcycled materials in her paper origami, creating jewelry from upcycled Upstate New York maps or Japanese Teen Magazines to name a few, and sometimes embellished with crystals to further accent these One Of A Kind (OOAK) earrings.

All month long we will be featuring upcycled {NewNew} goods, tips on getting crafty while recycling, Springtime features and general about town reporting for metro New York!

-Kimm
KimmChi.etsy.com

Cabin Fever Project #2: The T-Shirt Book Cover

by Lorina of The Original Beadscarf

Everytime my mother-in-law goes somewhere on vacation, she has this almost primal need to buy my husband and myself t-shirts emblazoned with the place she has just returned from. Now while it's very endearing of her to think of us, and I do graciously accept it, I never, ever wear them. However, I do tuck it away so that I might give those shirts a second life someday.

And so here's a nifty little project for you to try out, when you don't want to go out, when it's cold out. It's a take on the paper book cover that we were forced as kids to cover all our books with.

The T-Shirt Book Cover

You'll need:

t-shirt (preferably one with an interesting pattern, you can also try concert T's!)
book (that you want to cover)
good pair of scissors
tailor's chalk/pencil
tape measure
straight pins
needle and thread, (preferably a sewing machine)

How to:

1. Place your t-shirt on a flat surface and your book (open) on to the area you would like to use for your cover.

2. Measure the book and cut the t-shirt around the book while giving an allowance of 3" on the sides, and 1.5" on the top and bottom of the book, like so:

3. Fold the top and bottom excess edging parts in to create a sturdy and clean edge for your book cover and pin down like so:

4. Sew the edges down:

5. Fold and sew down the sides of the cover being very careful to get as close to the edge as possible (1/8"), this is where you create the "pocket" for the front and back covers of the book.

6. Put your swanky new book cover on your book!



7. Show off your fancy new book cover.....maybe even to the mother-in-law who gave you that tourist t-shirt, lest it inspire her to give you more t-shirts!!!! Enjoy!!!


For more great blogs from Lorina of The Original Beadscarf, click HERE!

Upcycle How-To: Holey Sweater Hats, Batman!

It's a fact that one of the best ways to keep warm is to cover your head. Unfortunately two other things are also usually true by this time in the winter. I've gotten bored with my current hats, and I've managed to ruin one of my favorite sweaters. Here is a simple sewing "How-To" to turn a holey sweater into two fun new hats.

Roughly cut up the sweater into useful pieces for both hats like this:
Now we're ready to start on Hat #1. So far this has been described by onlookers as "Asian-inspired" or "Modified Pillbox," but I figure that a hat by any other name will look as sweet.

Cut your large circle, and two pieces of the 3" band which are each 1/2 of around your head plus 2".

Pin and stitch (using a zig-zag or serger stitch to allow the hat to stretch) with 1" seam allowance at the finished edge diagonally to no seam allowance at the point of the unfinished edge.


This might give a slight point at the seams, so just cut at part off to make an smooth band.Pin band down to round with finished edge facing the center onto your large circle. There will probably be way too much seam allowance on the round, so just cut it off to match the edge of the band. wherever it makes a nice circle. Stitch with just 1/4" seam allowance (again using a zig-zag stitch or serger) around the circle.
Turn it right-side out, and put on your finished hat and show off your eco-friendly handywork.

Let's begin on hat #2. I refer to this style as "Mob Cap," but some others have insisted it's "Chef."

Cut your large circle, and 1 piece for the band which goes around your head plus 1".
Pin and stitch band (using a zig-zag or serger stitch to allow the hat to stretch) with 1/2" seam allowance to make a ring.
Sew 2 rows of shirring (either a large running stitch if by hand, or a straight stitch on the longest stitch length of your sewing machine) around your large circle. Leave long tails to pull the shirring tighter. Pull the threads until the edge of your circle is the same size as the band. Pin into place (wrong sides together, of course), and stitch around with 1/4" seam allowance.
Turn right-side out, and model it for anyone willing to look!

Now that you've finished two hats in the same fabric, you could get a hat accessory that could play double duty. Since my hats are orange, I'm partial to this threaded pin by urbahnika.


Hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and continue to let the NewNew blog keep you warm!

~Kari
http://ikyoto.etsy.com