Reminder - Eco Fest is this Sunday!

Hey everyone in the New York City area - stop by Eco Fest this Sunday, Sept. 30 between 11am and 6pm. We'll be in the Lincoln Center plaza and we'll be the ones with the kids turning scrap into art.

And if you have any old CDs, bring them to us at the event. One of our scrap projects is making CD suncatchers and we could always use extras. Plus it's a great way to recycle them.

Happy recycling!

free stuff!

People can't pass up free stuff (myself included). That's why, as I've been cleaning out stuff an old roommate left behind, I decided to give people passing by the first go at it.

Now I've never met this roommate, but I keep finding her belongings in every hard to reach corner in this place. Why she thought it was ok to leave this behind I'll never know. Perhaps she knew I wouldn't throw everything out, rather I'd have a moral conscious about getting rid of it and I'd take the time to sort through it and donate it to the appropriate places. So yesterday was my first attempt at getting rid of a pile. Here are photos from that attempt:

10 am
2 boxes + 2 bags of random stuff are set out on the street and marked with the words "WOW! FREE STUFF!"

view from above


11 am
Everything gone except some stuff in 1 box! Within an hour someone even took the Furby (it still worked because once I put it in the box it kept talking. I'm certain he's happy in his new home)


2pm
What??? More stuff??? Apparently we inspired a neighbor to also get rid of things. 2 odd tables and a wobbly vanity appeared next to the last of our items.


I guess that's the story of my life. I try to get rid of things, but I just end up with more than I started with. "I'm sure I need this mannequin leg! What a great lamp it will make someday! Ooh and this vaccum cleaner, too!"

Note: All the remaining items at the end of this day will be donated to Salvation Army. I have enough projects waiting to be remade in my design studio as it is. Although, those old pots and pans might make an interesting clock...

I heart Etsy Labs!

Have I told you how cool Etsy Labs is?

On Monday nights in Brooklyn, Etsy Labs has craft night and invites people into their lab with open (and FREE) arms. And regular people like me can come and use their equipment.

See, I've been considering buying a serger. (a serger is a supa-fancy sewing machine that makes nice edges on things.) But I've only used it once before and it's like a crazy maze to get 4 different strands of thread to go through at the right place. So it's much nicer when you can go somewhere and someone helps you to figure out the maze. Otherwise, I'd still be lost in a big pile of pink and black thread.

Or do you live outside the NYC area and hate it when I tell you about all the cool things going on around this town? Well, come visit then. This is a nice place.

it's a plastic bag curtain!

What do we do with all those plastic bags in this world? After we take them back to the grocery store and reuse them, use them a second time as garbage bags, knit with them, and turn them into earrings, there's still a pile of them in this world. In fact we supposedly use about 1,000,000 bags a minute!!! At least that's from this website.

Well, a few months ago I sat in on Joel's product design class at Pratt. In this class students were challenged to redesign items you'd normally discard into something you'd want to keep around. Brilliant concept, eh?

Kudos to Su Ng who came up with the idea of reusing plastic bags as curtains. She even wove them together with plastic bag strips! We needed some new curtains here at RePlayGround so we adapted her idea with our surplus stash of plastic bags. Shown above is our newest member of the recycled RePlayGround family. Thanks for inspiring us, Su!

Next time we might want to use more colorful ones, like of the pink and red Chinatown variety. If you have a bunch of colorful ones on-hand let us know and we might put them to a new, good use like this... or be inspired to think up something entirely new.

Have a nice day!

it's a plastic bag bag!

I met Hello Knitty on Monday night at Etsy Lab's craft night. Hello Knitty cuts up old plastic bags, spins the plastic like it's yarn, and knits it into new, longer-lasting and stronger bags. I saw a few of these bags up close and I think the spinning is what gives these bags the extra twist.

Now, if that's not a good lookin' plastic bag bag, I don't know what is. This is definitely a great example of upcycling.

eco-fest here we come!

If you're in NYC on September 30, be sure to stop by Eco-Fest at Lincoln Center and show us some recycling love. We'll have our cute little table with all of our recycled wares, and we'll even have some FREE kids projects, that adults can do, too! That's right, we said FREE.

One of our projects involves old CDs, so if you have a surplus of old CDs please drop them off at the event. Both data and music CDs are ok. One of our projects will be making CD suncatchers. If you're not in the area, you can follow along by making a CD suncatcher at home. We're not cool enough to have a webcam or anything, but if you concentrate real hard I'm sure you can picture us there coloring in a CD right there with you. Isn't imagination way better than a webcam?

Happy recycling!

Make Time for a Green Cause

Our friends over at Thwart Design are organizing a very timely competition.

Here's the scoop:
Make Time for a Green Cause - Be a part of a competition to raise money for local green and sustainable causes.

The challenge is to create a clock that incorporates one element of sustainability within the design. Fifty of the submitted designs will be showcased in our NYC fundraising event in which all clocks will have an opportunity to be purchased.

The first half of the proceeds will go to the winning artist, and the other half goes towards select green and sustainable non-profit organizations. During the event our distinguished panel of judges will award 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place designs.

All submissions due Nov. 5th, 2007.

If you have any questions or you need a clock mechanism, please email robprice at thwartdesign dot com.

Salvage Fest 2007!

I stopped by the Salvage Fest this weekend and found wonderful piles of doorknobs, tin ceiling panels, faucets and more. Ooh ooh - plenty of potential to becoming a coat rack, a picture frame, a candle holder, or other transformed creations. What a lovely vision of reclaimed scrap on a sunny Saturday in Brooklyn.

The good people over at Brownstoner organized it and it included NYC scrap favorites like the Demolition Depot, Build It Green, and Reclaimed Home. Stay tuned - possibly more scrap events in the works.

Hurray for salvage!

Salvage Fest - this Saturday 9/8/07 in Brooklyn, NY

Just reading the words Salvage Fest in my inbox made my eyebrows raise and a smile appear on my face. A celebration of junk? Why that sounds like my kind of party.
After further reading it appears to be exactly what the title suggests - a big pile of salvage for design junkies like me to pick through. It mentions items like doorknobs, lighting, flooring, doors, and other stuff will be there. If you're in the New York City area this weekend, check it out.