• Lynsey from SwirlyArts has been in touch to tell us about two of her recent reusing projects – turning a unwanted old diary into an expenses notebook and how to make pretty padded envelopes out of old books & bubblewrap, as an alternative to boring Jiffy bags.
• The Cottage Smallholder is having a reusing/recycling gardening competition this month – how are you reusing/recycling things to get ready for the next growing season?
• Speaking of getting organised, check out My Tiny Plot for a great idea for keeping up with seed sowing – it’s not strictly a reuse but it could be — an old floppy disk box/card file would be great for this.
• Mrs Green on My Zero Waste has written about a new initiative to recycle crisp packets in the UK.
• I really like the aesthetic of cardboard for home decor so love this idea of making wall art using toilet roll/kitchen roll tubes.
• Julie on Crafting a Green World has written a great round-up of baby projects made from old tshirts.
• And finally, make a feature wall at home a bit different – don’t use generic feature wall wallpaper, use old books (or music scores) instead. As a booklover, I don’t know if I could take apart a still-could-be-read book for such a purpose but it’s a great idea for books that are falling apart.

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? ;)

We’ve had an email from Alice who wants to turn this whole crazy thing on its head:

Instead of an item that I want to recycle, I’m actually working backwards here – does anyone know what kind of waste could be used to build a sturdy bookcase?

A few ideas spring to mind from previous posts – namely snowboards (and I guess skateboards would be similar), hollowcore doors – and old hollowed out televisions. There is also a suggestion on making shelves out of old books but I suspect that’s more decorative than sturdy.

If you’re interested in an industrial look, you could use stacked metal food cans (or decorated old paint can) between the shelves – and depending how you do it, they could be used for secret storage too – or skip-diving might turn up some breeze blocks or the like (it might get heavy quickly but red house bricks would look cool).

Any other suggestions?

(Photo by GiniMiniGi)

I’ve been thinking about doing a post on books for a while but the very, very obvious answer for me is “charity shops”. I buy a lot of books from charity shops and give away ones I’m done with but we’ve got a big stack of books that aren’t really suitable for that route – namely, very out of date geeky tech books.

A lot of the technology that John’s interested in moves so fast that the books are practically out of date by the time they’ve been printed and sent out. He’s trying to buy e-book versions instead now but that doesn’t address the collection he’s amassed over the years. General theory books might be of use to someone but a lot of the (very geeky, professional) training-manual types are pretty much obsolete. They’re very specialist and as I said, very out of date so chances are they’d just sit on the shelf at a charity shop until they were thrown out, or someone would waste their money buying them, thinking they’d be more useful than they are. We’ve tried giving them away through our local geek group (WYLUG) but no one wants them.

They’re big, thick, well-printed tomes and it seems a waste just to send them for recycling.

So any suggestions?

(Photo by hatashonin)