Shopping

ikcdesign: Original (re)Design

By admin  |  2011/09/13 11:51 Posted in Environmentally Focused, Products, Shopping, Stuff I Love!  |  Comments (0)

http://www.etsy.com/listing/62006649/upcycled-checkbook-cover-made-from

I’ve run out of checks again so it’s time to order a new set. After wading through screens of puppies and fairies and Christmas designs, I finally decided to just reorder the argyle that I’m already using. I know; boring. I still can’t figure out what kind of person wants to have Christmas themed checks all year long, but I digress… As I was about to checkout the page suggested that I buy a matching leather checkbook cover. “Ooh…pretty”, I thought, but then I realized that it’s new and it’s leather. Neither of which are particularly environmentally-friendly, so I popped over to Etsy to see what I could find in the upcycled/recycled categories. In college I studied Japanese language and East Asian studies and have retained my love of all things Asian. I was so excited to find checkbook covers made from recycled book pages about Japan. There were so many interesting choices. One seller in particular had some very creatively recycled pages that I thought would make for a very stylish checkbook cover. They also recycled the tops from trophies and old album covers. The seller named ikc (original redesign) has a very catchy tagline “Old is the new New”. I love it! Here are few other really cool recycled homegoods by ikcdesign:

Shopping Local on Etsy

By admin  |  2011/08/05 07:28 Posted in Environmentally Focused, Local to Baltimore, Shopping, Uncategorized, Website  |  Comments (0)

While I don’t really love to shop, when I do need to buy things I prefer to a. shop online, b. shop local, and c. buy used. Why? Well, I’m lazy, cheap and concerned about the environment. I also love hand made or artisan objects if a suitable vintage piece can’t be fuond, but I usally stick to pre-owned (see previous comment about beign cheap). Etsy is a great place to browse, buy and sell and I especially love their “Shop Local” button that narrows down my search to those items in the area that I list. You can even expand the search terms to narrow it down further. In my general browsing/shopping I just type in Baltimore, MD and from there I can just click on the “vintage” choice to find all things once loved, but now waiting for me. So, if you too love to shop online and want to save some dough and a little petrol, then buy local and if you need help finding some good vintage in your neighborhood try Etsy.

Stuff I Love: Paper Made from Poo!

By admin  |  2011/04/26 07:42 Posted in Environmentally Focused, Products, Shopping, Stuff I Love!, Website  |  Comments (0)

Yes, you did read that correctly. I am referencing paper recyled from excrement. Ewwww…. Well, The Great Elephant Poo Poo Paper Company has a cute little slogan that reads, “We take the OO out of Poo”. This paper has been crafted from the undigested plant fibers left behind by elephants. It’s allowed to dry, cleaned and then made into paper. According to their website, they can make 25 large sheets of paper from a single elephant dropping. In addition, their website gives great elephant facts, including this one:

Did You Know? – Surprising Facts About Elephants

~ Elephants eat 300 – 600 lb (130 – 270 kg) of food per day – 60% of that food leaves the elephant’s body undigested.

 I love this product because it’s unique, sustainable and helps endangered elephants while creating a useful and attractive final product. The line of safari and sea life paper products are adorable! The best thing is that by developing the recycled poo paper industry they are contritubting to the welfare of elephants:

Products With a Purpose

Our purpose is to successfully sell our goods in order to complete a truly creative sustainable cycle:

where raw materials with little other use are utilized to make a useful and functional product all the while providing jobs and opportunity along the way and ultimately selling our goods at a profit from which a portion changeis directed to a worthwhile cause: elephant welfare and conservation.

 

Basically, our sustainable cycle works like this: as with all creatures on our planet, elephants need a clean environment and a good diet. With these needs met, an elephant produces a lot of dung, which we collect and use to make our products. We work with various conservation parks (and mahouts) to gather the dung poo (which is full of fibrous material and makes great paper). We then process the dung into paper sheets from which our productsproductsare made. The more we sell to customers like you and to stores across the country and around the world world…the more we can contribute as a portion of the profits from each item you buy is contributed to elephant welfare and conservation programs!

What a great cause! They also offer fundraising for clubs, associations and environmental groups. So, embrace the poo, it may just be the paper of the future.

Spring Cleaning Time Again: DIY Natural All-Purpose Cleaner Recipes

By admin  |  2011/03/04 12:13 Posted in DIY, Environmentally Focused, Product, Shopping, Tutorial  |  Comments (0)

This weekend is spring cleaning time again around my house.  As you may have read in previous posts I try to use inexpensive, effective and natural cleaners wherever possible. I swear by vinegar for cleaning counter tops, stainless steel and cutting boards, but when it comes to all purpose cleaners for bathrooms, floors, etc. I have a new recipe:

All-Purpose Cleaner

1/2 Gallon of Water

2 tsp Borax

1/2 C vinegar

As for everything in the bathroom, when in doubt, just use borax. It’s abrasive and natural and leaves everything clean, shiny and fresh. I sprinkle some around inside my toilet and let it sit while I clean, then I just use my little scrubby brush and voila! It’s clean and fresh! Essentially, some mixture of vinegar, borax and water can clean anything in your house. If you have stains and you need some abrasive, just add the borax.  For dusting, cleaning wood floors and furniture polish though I recommend buying. I use Method’s Wood for Good because it removes scratches and leaves everything smelling almondy and rich,  but there are lots of healhty and natural options out there. You can even use a bit of olive oil and lemon juice to make a good wood cleaner/polisher if you want. I don’t have to use it enough to be concerned about the economic impact of my wood cleaner because I use mostly all-purpose cleaner around my home. What about you? What natural and/or DIY cleaners do you use around your home? Do you have any great recipes to share? If so, leave them in the comments below.  Happy Cleaning!

Etsy Shop Feature: Interview with Lola’s Jewels

By admin  |  2010/12/29 21:56 Posted in Activism, Environmentally Focused, Products, Shopping, Website  |  Comments (2)


I enjoy handmade craft for many reasons as you may already know from previous posts. The benefits of purchasing handmade are many, you provide living wages to someone that you can get to know rather than supporting a faceless corporation who may be purchasing from abused workers overseas, you can ensure quality and customer service are a premium and help the economy by ensuring that hard working, creative and entrepreneurial designers can practice the craft of their choice. You can purchase items online, at a craft fair or even your local farmer’s market. However, every so often I would like to take the time to feature and help you get to know some of the handmade artisans who have setup virtual shops on Etsy. This is the first shop feature that I’ll be promoting here and it’s an interview with Lola’s Jewels.

I’ve decided to start with this shop because it’s local to me. Lola’s Jewels hails from my home town, the lovely Charm City, Baltimore, Maryland.

ICouldSewDoThat: First, tell me a little something about yourself.

Lola’s Jewels: I am a mother of three wonderful children. I work full time and love to design jewelry in my “spare time”. This actually relaxes me. I even have my 7 year old daughter making her own jewelry. I love to read and enjoy lots of time with the family.

ICouldSewDoThat: So what inspires you?

Lola’s Jewels: My inspiration definitely comes from my family. I named my shop Lola’s jewels after my daughter and I hope she will design and create jewelry to add to the shop one day. She has a great imagination and an eye for design, so we shall see.

ICouldSewDoThat:As you may know I love eco-friendly design and have been trying to “green” up a bit for a variety of reasons. What about you, do you consider yourself environmentally conscious?

Lola’s Jewels:I am definitely eco-friendly! Waste not want not! My scrabble tile jewelry is made from upcycled game pieces. The shell items in my shop are made form actual sea shells found while on vacation with my family in Florida. There will be more upcycled jewelry coming soon!!

ICouldSewDoThat:Have you found any other shops that you really love to shop in or are inspired by on Etsy?

Lola’s Jewels:I have many favorite Etsy sellers. There are so many talented people on Etsy.

ICouldSewDoThat:“I love it when….”?

Lola’s Jewels:People love my creations! There is no better compliment.

ICouldSewDoThat:For Baltimore locals is there a way where we can shop local and catch you outside of your Etsy store?

Lola’s Jewels:I will be at local craft fairs in the Spring and you never know where else…… keep your eyes open for Lola’s Jewels!

ICouldSewDoThat:What’s are some totally random facts about you?

Lola’s Jewels:Dessert is my favorite part of the meal. I see the beauty in everything. I love Sunsets!

ICouldSewDoThat:Thanks so much for taking the time to share a little bit about yourself and your craft.

Be sure to check out the shop and look for Lola’s Jewels locally in Baltimore. You can follow her on Twitter or friend her on Facebook.

Remember to shop local and buy handmade!

It’s Party Time!

By admin  |  2010/12/10 12:23 Posted in Environmentally Focused, Fashion, Products, Shopping  |  Comments (5)

That’s right folks, it’s officially party season. From now through New Year’s Eve you will be expected to don your best duds and doll yourself up to spend time with friends, family, coworkers and acquaintances. You can’t be seen wearing the same fancy dress year after year or be caught wearing the same suit and tie in every after party photo can you? What’s a green girl or boy to do? Even worse is the thought of shelling out all of that hard earned dough during this tough economy for a single purpose dress to be worn once and then hung in a fancy bag in the dimmest corner of your closet until you finally give up and donate it. Well, before you do that try refashioning. If you like to sew just grab a dress from a local clothing swap, goodwill or best friend who doesn’t want to wear it anymore. Purchase or make your own pattern and refashion that frock. I realize that this isn’t likely to happen for most of us during this busy holiday season, so I present to you some environmentally-friendly, budget conscious alternatives to grabbing that shiny new outfit from the rack. Check out some of these great recycled and vintage pieces from the crafty sellers on Etsy:

No Trash Wrap Christmas

By admin  |  2010/11/08 07:57 Posted in DIY, Environmentally Focused, Product, Products, Shopping  |  Comments (2)

Now that halloween is behind us, I’m skipping Thanksgiving temporarily and moving right to Christmas. Yes, I agree that it’s annoying when retailers do this and we should all slow down and enjoy the holidays. Ordinarily I would agree whole-heartedly, but this year, as in previous year, I’m making Christmas presents for friends and family again. I’m stepping up my game this year though and putting my newly found skill for knitting and crochet to work and cranking out gifts for the whole family. Some of these gifts are rather ambitious (omg how long will it take me to crochet 4 balls of yarn for one gift?!?) and we’ve only a few crafting weeks left until the big day. So for this reason, I am already 3 balls of yarn down and in the background of every football game you can hear the needles clicking away I’ll try to post up photos of my achievements as I go. 

Unfortunately, all this time spent on gifts means that I can’t spend as much time on my Etsy store. I will however be sure to list some festive christmas gift bags (from recycled fabrics of course) that can be reused and passed among the family members in addition to my recycled paper bows.  I hope to have time to list some other goodies, but I think I’d better focus on one task at a time for now. In order to celebrate the concept of a cleaner, greener holiday I am promoting the no trash wrap holiday tradition, which means don’t use throwaway packaging if you can help it; and if you must be sure it’s at least made from recycled materials.  Here’s the promotion that I’ll be running in my shop through the end of the year.

SerendipiT’s Shop Announcement

Did You Know? In the U.S., an additional 5 million tons of waste is generated during the holidays. Four million tons of this is wrapping paper and shopping bags. Through the end of January 31, 2011 I will include either one (1) free refashioned t-shirt shopping tote bag or three (3) recycled paper bows with every purchase. Please let me know your preference by sending me a convo at checkout.

The individual members of the Fashion:Remix Team are committed to help fight the trash by offering promotional items tagged “notrashwrap”. Search for each of our unique solutions for a greener holiday season.

SerendipiT sources fabrics from previously loved clothing and recycles these textiles into hand-crafted EcoChic fashion. This eco-friendly process reduces our consumption of raw materials and precious resources. Refashioned clothing and accessories are true sustainable fashion that helps you to reduce your environmental impact on the Earth. I will donate 10% of all proceeds to The Conservation Fund, America’s Partner in Conservation. For the past 25 years, The Conservation Fund has been America’s partner in conservation, protecting more than 6.5 million acres. www.conservationfund.org – $15 donated so far in 2010

*Proud Member of the Fashion: Remix Team (tag: fashionremixteam)

*Proud member of the Recyclers Team Guild (tag: wastenot)
Proud Member of the Etsy Recyclers Guild Team
Visit us at http://www.EtsyRecyclersGuild.blogspot.com

What’s So Scary About Halloween?

By admin  |  2010/10/20 14:17 Posted in Environmentally Focused, Products, Shopping  |  Comments (0)

If you guessed it’s environmental impact, you’d be right. The amount of waste generated by this annual celebration is truly terrifying! The tradition of wearing costumes on Halloween has been around in the U.S. since the early 1900′s. With all of the parties, costumes and candy for trick-or-treating Halloween is one of the largest, most expensive and wasteful traditions second only to Christmas. As environmental awareness has begun to gain traction in recent years more families are beginning to look at ways to reduce waste and, due to the current economic climate, expenses. Fortunately both of these are good for the environment and hopefully will help result in more sustainable traditions for future generations. One group that has formed for the purpose of creating “healthier and more Earth-friendly holidays” is Green Halloween. A small grass-roots movement, now sponsored by a collection of household named organic and natural food producers and smaller sponsors focused on health and the environment are backing this group who have helped to raise awareness and organize opportunities for people to participate in making Halloween a healthier holiday. If you’d like to participate in a Green Halloween this year; here’s a list of tips from their website to get you started:

Spread the Green this Halloween

Get started with these simple steps

Downloadable action kits and materials to help you spread the green*

*If printing, please use recycled or tree-free paper.

Thank you!

The website has lots of great ideas, helpful hints and even a marketplace where you can purchase green halloween items.  As for my family, my now teenage daughter and I, will plan to continue the tradition of wearing thrifted, swapped, recycled halloween costumes.  We use basic black clothes and update them each year with different accessories. I’ve been wearing the same main black costume every year for about 10 years, but thanks to a bit of creativity and some careful accessorizing have managed to be everything from a devil to an angel, with masquerade, goth, and vampire in between. This year I’m going as a raven, with a change to my mask and the addition of a thrifted feather boa. Americans spend on average around $5 billion on costumes, decoration and candy, so give your family a little economic stimulus by focusing on refashioning your costume, upcycling your decorations and enjoy the opportunity to spend more time at home and less time at the mall.

Here are a few of my favorite recycled halloween supplies:

My Green Halloween! (check out the Etsy Treasury by clicking the link)

My Favorite App: Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything”

By admin  |  2010/10/19 08:12 Posted in DIY, Environmentally Focused, Product, Products, Recipe, Review, Shopping  |  Comments (0)

Earlier this summer I finally upgraded my ancient cell phone after it finally stopped charging and couldn’t be repaired. As you may know from previous posts I jumped on the iPhone bandwagon, and I’m glad that I did. I’ve found a lot of really useful, fun and entertaining apps, but my current favorite is Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything” app.

But wait…,”Who’s Mark Bittman?” you may be asking. Well, Mark Bittman is a reknowned cook and writer. He’s a columnist for The New York Times, jounalist and an author of many great cookbooks including:

Mark Bittman’s Quick and Easy Recipes from the New York Times: Featuring 350 recipes from the author of HOW TO COOK EVERYTHING and THE BEST RECIPES IN THE WORLD

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food

and

The Food Matters Cookbook: 500 Revolutionary Recipes for Better Living

In fact, his book, How to Cook Everything, Completely Revised 10th Anniversary Edition: 2,000 Simple Recipes for Great Foodsells on Amazon for over $20, but now you can download the App for $4.99. I can tell you that it’s a real bargain. I love that it’s on my phone, so I have it anytime that I need it. Some of my favorite features include the Bittman’s picks, which lists his favorite recipes. These include: Top 100 Vegetarian Recipes, Top 100 Make-Ahead Recipes and the Top 100 Fast Recipes; all of which are super useful for meal planning. You can then select your favorite recipe and with the push of a button add it directly to your calendar. You can plan recipes for a week or a month, or for that next party you have coming up during the holidays. If you didn’t plan your meal in advance and you just want to work with items you have laying around in the pantry or fridge you can use the search option. You can search by ingredient, cooking technique, flavor or recipe types (fast, make-ahead, vegetarian or essential). One of my favorite tools withint he app is the groceries feature. You can add right from the recipes or type in your own selections. It lets you organize by aisle so that you don’t have to go back and forth over the recipe to find everything at the store. You can even email your shopping list in case you have another family member who can stop and pick things up for you. Last, but no least is the ability to favorite your recipes. Best yet, you don’t have to carry around a printed book or pages or recipes from the internet. This frugal and environmentally friendly app gives you access to over 2,000 recipes and you’ll never have to waste paper printing a recipe in this easy to read format. Everything is in one convenient place (your iphone), which you were going to have to carry around anyway. This app has revolutionized weeknight cooking for me and I wanted to share my thoughts on what a great tool this is for any cook. Enjoy!

What I’ve been up to on Etsy

By admin  |  2010/09/13 14:14 Posted in Environmentally Focused, Products, Shopping, Uncategorized, Website  |  Comments (0)

Hey, here’s a peek at both my personal shop (Serendipit) and my team’s shop (Fashion:Remix). Please keep us in mind for your personal wardrobe updates and gift giving. We all make and sell eco-friendly refashioned or recycled clothing and accessories.

 
RT @Staples: Think you’re a speedy reader? Check out the reading test on our interactive eReader infographic. RT to share. http://t.co/U ...24 minutes ago