Last week this little lady –> arrived in my email inbox.

She (I’m presuming she’s a she, from the eyelashes and pink scarf) is the work of Dutch artist Carolien Adriaansche.

Carolien makes all sorts of wonderfully cute creatures out of old rubbish – like our friend here, who has a bleach bottle body as well as her lightbulb head, and the three guys below, who are just so full of personality that it hurts :)

Carolien also uses other plastic bottles – like those thin ones that all purpose cleaner comes in – to make headless beasts.

Using the handles for their ever-quite-gormless mouths, they have drink bottle caps for eyes and ears/horns made out of rubber gloves, plastic coathangers and even toe separators. Very cute.

See more of Carolien’s work on her website – click her name, then anywhere on the pink & blue guys, then her name again and on the big “C” for the galleries.

We’ve had an email from Melanie:

I’ve got a bag of sea shells, whole and broken, I collected from a vacation in Mexico. The shells were interesting at the time, but not any more. I’m looking to give them to somebody who would use them for crafts. I’m already reusing a large shell to hold small miscellaneous items on my desk and being crafty with shells doesn’t appeal to me at this point in time.

I’ve attached a photo of the extra shells I have and a photo of my large “dish” shell (below).

If you specifically want to give them away to be reused, Freecycle might be the best way to go – someone in your local area might love them. Any suggestions on what that crafty person might do with them?

As for other more practical reuses, I suspect we’ll have some overlap with the mussel shells post but anything else Melanie could do with them?

(Heh, I put this in the “packaging” category – because they were sea creature packaging once ;) )

Amy Quarry dropped us an email this week with a link to her blog post on ten ways to repurposing old clothes, reusing as much of the original structure/shape as possible to save time.

Half the list take big clothes and turn them into little clothes: for example, with some pleating around the top and some arm holes chopped in the sides, an adult size skirt can quickly become a child’s dress (right). Or shrinking a woman’s blouse widthwise to make a baby/child’s dress. All very cute.

For those of us without small people (and/or willing cats) to dress, she includes ideas such as making a mini-skirt into a bag and sundresses into aprons (below).

I love these ideas because I’ve got quite a few items of clothing that I love but either which don’t fit any more or don’t suit me as they are any more – but could easily be repurposed like this. Time to unleash the sewing machine!

(Pictures with permission from Amy’s blog)

Alison Bailey Smith, of the very cool wire hats, baskets and clothes, has told me about a recycling week that’s happening in Liverpool later this month.

Organised by Red Dot Exhibitions, “Recycle into Art” is a week of workshops about turning waste materials into art, furniture and various things like bags and musical instruments. There is also a trip to a recycling plant in Bootle. It all sounds wonderfully interesting and fun – and best of all, it’s FREE!

The full programme of workshops is on the site as are the contact details of the person to get in touch with if you want to go to them.

I’m hoping to go to the launch event on the Friday (because I heart St Luke’s aka the bombed out church) and hope to go to Alison’s all day workshop too – I just wish I had time to go to all the sessions (boo work, boo).

I’ve been thinking a lot about old vinyl records recently because of Renee’s great idea of using them as a canvas for art and because of Kimberly’s suggestion to poke holes in one to hold earrings – I think I’m going to combine the two ideas to make a cool jewellery display unit.

Anyway, thinking about these things reminded me of Jeff Davis’ fab creations from old vinyl. Under the Vinylux brand, he makes a range of cool household items – bowls, snack trays, picture frames – and other things like cuffs (below left) and notebooks.

I especially like the picture frame (below right) – because the record is re-used in two ways: the outside of the record becomes the frame and the inside bit is used as a coaster.