Most of our recycling-stuff-into-art posts so far have been rather crafty so here is something at the more fine art end of the scale.

Despite the exhibition being around for a decade, I’ve some how managed to miss HA Schult’s ‘Trash People’.

This army of 1000 figures – made from crushed cans, electronic waste and other rubbish – has stood in public spaces in Rome, Barcelona, Moscow, New York, Paris – and even dotted along the Great Wall of China.

The pictures show you the detail but it takes a video (or the very long shots on Schult’s website) to show you the scale – the amount of the figures. The video below shows someone walked around the Cologne, Germany exhibition.

A very cool display – and hopefully one that got people thinking more creatively about their rubbish, or at least thinking about not producing so much.

(Creative Commons Attribution photos from dbking on Flickr – bigger pictures available on there too)

Lucia, of the weather balloons from last week, is another one of those fab people who makes cool things by recycling random stuff.

You can see examples of her creations at http://www.jblarts.com but I thought I’d also feature a few of my favourite things here – namely the egg box fairy light shades (above) and the old electronics as earrings below. I also think what she’s dubbed a “tattoo bracelet” is also very cool – a shaped strip of an old plastic bottle with a pretty design on it – a simple but great idea, with loads of possible variations.

A couple of weeks ago, Ann posted a comment about “Bracelets with a Conscience” that she makes out of “soda can tabs”.

She sent me a few pictures of the bracelets recently and I think a great idea.

But what else can be done with those tabs? Any suggestions?

(We covered the cans themselves back in the day – over two years ago, gosh! that’s an eon in internet time!)

Following on from Tuesday’s post about recycling old jewellery, I’ve had an email from Jane Eldershaw about recycling junk to make new jewellery.

Jane loves making jewellery out of junk and found items – and has even written a book about her creations.

I love this type of stuff – and not just because it justifies me keeping loads of random little things to turn into jewellery or whatever one day. I think my favourite piece of Jane’s is the yellow peg necklace below and the more delicate key chain above – but the pencil necklace is very fun too. I’ve only featured necklaces here but Jane also makes bracelets, earrings and all sorts of things so if you’re interested, check out her site – http://junkjewelry.blogspot.com/

Continuing in our semi-regular series of crafters making cool things by recycling and reusing random stuff, let me introduce Lynsey of SwirlyArts:

I saw over on your blog that you wanted to know what people are making out of old rubbish and stuff that is normally recycled. Well I make lots of things in my Etsy store out of products that are destined for the recycle bin and I thought you might like to check them out. I turn egg boxes into sewing kits, old maps and magazines into envelopes, gift tags, badges and stickers and I make chicken shaped doorstops from second hand fabric.

All very cute – and inspiring – stuff. Browsing through Lynsey’s Flickr profile, I particularly liked the Lego box gift tags (so colourful) and the old books (in her case a children’s German dictionary) into envelopes. I, of course, also love the doorstop chickens – because who couldn’t? ;)