Great repurposing idea

Hi, Rachel here. Just popping in very quickly today to share a link with you (I've been hit by a horrid summer cold and am feeling a bit blah, so please forgive the brevity of this post!)

I recently spotted this idea for repurposing old cosmetic jars and thought it was very cute! I personally have a whole shoebox full of these kinds of blue glass jars (I'm a Neals Yard fan) that I cannot bear to throw away, or even to put in the recycling bins, so I thought this would be a really great way of re-using them. I've never made candles before, but have always fancied having a go, and this does look pretty easy, so I think it will be going on my list of things to do!

(Link originally found via this blog).

Do let us know if you give this a try, or if you have found any other repurposing ideas that we could share here.

Rachel x

Ingenious!

This beautiful crocheted flower necklace is the creation of our lovely friend Jane at Hooked Yarn.

What you probably don't realise though is that, in an incredibly inventive bit of repurposing, Jane has used old Morrisons carrier bags to create the yarn to make the flowers!

How clever is that! (And this isn't the first time Jane has done something like this - if you checked out all the Green Swap posts you might have noticed that she also crocheted a little trinket pot using old cassette tape!)

We think this is a brilliant example of how, with a little imagination, even the most dull and uninspiring items can be turned into something special. To read Jane's full post, click here.

Emma & Rachel x

Green Swap Links - part two

Apologies for taking so long to post this! My only excuse is that the heat has made me more lethargic than usual (!) and I still haven't been able to find all the links, so if I've missed you out please do email us asap and let us know where you posted about your swap goodies. In the meantime, do check out these lovely ladies:-

Floss
Daisy
Maria
and A Country Girl

Big thanks again to everyone who took part!

I realise that we've been a bit quiet over the last couple of months, but I've got a couple of ideas brewing so will hopefully have a few more posts for you soon! Watch this space...

Rachel & Emma x

Green Swap links - part one

Here, as promised, are the first batch of links to our Green Swap participants' posts. Sorry it's taken me a while to sort this - I can't seem to keep up with things at the moment - but I hope you'll take the time to follow the links and see all the wonderful things that people came up with for this swap. There have been some really ingenious ideas!

To see what Emma received from Jane, click here
To see what Lorraine received from me, click here
To see what I received from Lorraine, click here
To see what Annie received from Floss, click here
To see what Jane received from Emma, click here
To see what The French Frog sent her partner, Marigold Jam, click here
and to see what Gemma sent to The Mad House, click here

Obviously, there are still some links to come in, so I will be chasing those up and will hopefully post the rest very soon. Once we've heard from everyone, we'll do a proper round up post.

Rachel x

Green Swap Reminder!

Just a quick reminder that the deadline for sending out your green swap parcel is Monday 7th June. Please do drop us a line and let us know once you have blogged about your swap parcel so that we can all come and see what you sent and, once everyone has received their parcels, we'll do a little round up post.

Thanks again to everyone who is taking part.

Rachel & Emma xx

Green swap inspiration

Hi, Rachel here. Today I thought I'd share a few links with you that you might find useful for the Green swap (or just generally, of course, you don't have to be swapping to use these!)

Betz White of the brilliant Sewing Green book has several tutorials on her blog that use recycled materials. I particularly like the jeans apron and pillowcase apron tutorials.

Mindful Momma also has a very useful page of links for all kinds of earth friendly makes, including green cleaning, bodycare, sewing and other crafts, which you can find here.

And finally, the Repurposeful blog is choc full of ideas for repurposing pretty much anything you can think of! Click on the archives button for links to all the different categories.

Hopefully there will be something here that will give you some ideas and inspiration. If you know of any other great tutorials, please do let us know so that we can share them here with everyone.

Take care
Rachel x

Swap partner changes

Just a quick update - it came to my attention yesterday that one of our swap pairs have already been partnered with each other for another swap, so there has been a quick re-jig as follows:

Gemma will now be partnered with The Mad House
Lorraine will now be partnered with Contented (me!)

Hope there are no other problems but, if so, please do let us know and we'll do our best to help.

Rachel x