Alley Recycling Exhibition

Ashley, one of our RePlayGround instructors, was recently on a trip to Europe and saw Alley Recycling exhibition space at Design Pack gallery.  The space is located at 24 rue de Richelieu and is devoted solely to the art of packaging design.  Alley recycling states its aim is to "encourage sorting and recycling of packaging and the development of best practices for prevention and waste reduction."  Here are a few pics she took for RePlayGround readers to see!

Swanky shelves made from an old door

Instructables is a wealth of  DIY instruction, and it's where we love to look for new ideas and creative inspiration.  Recently, we came across a cool furniture upcycling project that can reinvent a room.  It's a set of shelves made out of an old door and fallen tree branches, and you can find instructions from Instructables member LaxCatCreations here.

 
image via instructables.com

Take a Seat: recycle a chair project

Artist Jason Eppink's latest project, which is aptly titled Take a Seat, is an ongoing series of public furniture installations in New York subway stations. Subway riders are encouraged to recycle or rescue a chair from being thrown in the landfill, and instead place it in a subway station, where it may get some good use. Eppink's goal is to increase the availability of seating in subway stations, and anyone can place a chair, take a picture of it, and send it to his blog: http://jasoneppink.com/take-a-seat/?pid=39


photo via http://jasoneppink.com/take-a-seat/?pid=39

Create with Crates!

We recently added some upcycled storage space in our RePlayGround studio. We used discarded wooden wine crates, and stacked them to create shelving space. Colorful clamps secure the boxes together.

For a few more DIY storage crate ideas, check out these easy instructions:

Add casters to the bottom of a crate to build a moveable bookcase by Factorycraftdirect.com

Build floating kitchen shelves by planetgreen.com

Spice up your garden with these crate planters by re-nest.com

These storage projects are the cratest way to get organized!

Time to play with your garbage!

Image courtesy Design Sponge

Anytime is a great time to play with your garbage. A good friend (who has an awesome new photography site) just directed me over to Design Sponge to check out this super cute clock made from recycled toys and stuffed animals. It appears that it's been painted white to give them a uniform look. It would go great with one of those stuffed animal chairs from the Campana brothers.

Image courtesy Campana brothers

Coat Rack Design Challenge

Tiffany, always a junkie for upcycling projects, gave me a challenge recently to create a coat rack for the RePlayGround design studio.

The design rules were as follows:
1) The coat rack must be able to be mounted to the wall
2) It must hang at least six items
3) The rack must be made out of repurposed items!

With these design aspects in mind, I decided to give some old wood coat hangers an unconventional twist with this Upside Down Coat Hanger Rack:



I started by cutting off all but 1" of one side of each coat hanger. This left enough space to mount the coat hangers onto a scrap wood 2 X 4. Next, we drilled screws from the back of the wood plank into the cut part of the coat hanger, making sure to space each hanger 4" apart. This took one person to line up the hanger to the wood and hold everything in place, while a second person screwed the pieces together. For extra security, I dabbed a bit of wood glue to the sawed off part of each hanger to make sure the hangers won't twist out of place when in use!



Now our coats are hanging around the design studio in upcycled style!