Since it’s coming up to Valentine’s Day, I thought it might be nice to have a round up of fun recycling/upcycling Valentine’s Day crafts – for inspiration or purchase!

• Andrea Cook has been making cute Valentine’s Day cards out of recycled handmade paper and fabric scraps. Coupled-up kitties!
• Sarah from Wrapped up with String has also been making pretty recycled paper cards.
• And Alison Bailey Smith told us: “I pulped up lots of paper, in different colours & add hearts using plastic from advent calendars to make cards” – cute idea.
• The Spotted Sparrow has come up with some fun print-and-make ideas: a book of love coupons or an old fashioned library card. I like the idea of reusing the latter each year but that’s possibly because I’m cheap ;)
• Not strictly Valentine’s-y but I love this notebook made from recycled materials – an old shirt, beer mats and reclaimed tissue paper have been used to make it. It would make a fab diary.
• We saw the equivalent at Christmas but I still love the idea of magazines being upcycled into garlands – using a heart-shaped punch and a sewing machine, this Valentine’s Day garland is made in next to no time. (A flower seed catalogue would work well too – pretty coloured flowers a-go-go – and they’re very common at this time of year.)
• Another way to make a heart garland is to curve strips into hearts – and hearts within hearts. Lots of pretty examples made from maps, old books, music scores and other vintage papers…
• If your loved one is, like mine, not exactly the most punctual person in the world – how about a heart shaped clock made from an old vinyl record?
• Personally John and I aren’t big Valentine’s people but have been known to bestow the occasional love token upon each other at other times of the year. A couple of years ago, we bought something in a paper bag with red hearts on it – when John was out, I cut out all the hearts and left them in his closed laptop – when he opened it, they flew everywhere – a shower of hearts. :)

Will you be upcycling or recycling anything for your loved one(s) for Valentine’s Day? If so, tell us your plans – if it won’t ruin the surprise ;)

(Thanks to everyone who sent suggestions via Twitter!)

We’ve covered reuses for old gift bags in general before but Meri emailed asking about one particular type:

I have a growing collection of wine bags – mostly paper – that are too nice to toss.

How can I recycle them – get them to people who might reuse them?

Most people I know reuse wine bags (and all gift bags) as many times as they can while they’re still in good enough condition to pass on. There is a bit of a tradition in my family to leave gift tags bare or written using a soft pencil to facilitate multiple uses.

If you’d rather not re-uses them yourself and have a number to give away, offer them on your local Freecycle/Freegle list. Scrap stores would probably welcome them with open arms too, as would organisers of local charity events like tombola or raffles, to make the prizes fancier/more mysterious.

Any other suggestions on where to pass them on? And what about reuses for the tall thin gift bags like these?

Ahead of Valentine’s Day on Sunday, I thought it might be worth linked to some of our old posts relevant to this time of year – making homemade recycled gifts & stuff, and recycling/reusing packaging and whatnot from love-tokens you might receive from others.

• How to reuse or recycle dried fresh flowers – such as roses?
• How to reuse or recycle chalky candy hearts?
• How to reuse or recycle the plastic wrapping from a bouquet?
• How to reuse or recycle gift bags
• How to make your own gifts bags/recycled wrapping from waste materials
• How to reuse or recycle a wedding dress?
• How to make a photo frame/mirror frame reusing recycled materials
• How to reuse or recycle greetings cards?
• How to reuse or recycle wrapping paper?
• How to reuse or recycle chocolate boxes?
• How to reuse or recycle wrappers from individual chocolates?

We all know wrapping paper is bad, m’okay? and that reusable gift bags are a far better alternative if you go in for that type of presentation and reusable gifts bags made out of recycled stuff from around the home are better yet – but how do you make them?

I wanted to make a gift bag in a hurry the other day out of some old brown paper. A quick search pointed me towards a number of tutorials which used existing boxes as templates – either intact boxes or as nets – but I wondered if anyone else had any other designs?

Another idea I had was to make a quick pouch out of a pretty fabric – or even just fold the fabric furoshiki style.

Any other suggestions?

Gift bags are great alternative to wrapping paper because it’s a lot easier to reuse them, and amongst everyone I’ve ever spoken to about it, it’s generally accepted that people will reuse them to give similar sized gifts in the future.

But what about when they get a bit tatty to be recirculated again?

I’ve got one – made out of a light card instead of heavy paper – to keep my small, current crochet project out of the preying paws of cats, and I’ve seen big paper ones remade into smaller paper ones – cutting off the tatty edges and refolding it again.

Any other suggestions?

(Photo by lusi)