The DIY Channel’s new show, “This New House” premieres tonight, July 29th, at 8PM/7C.  If the trailer for the series is any indication, it should be chock full of innovative, high tech products, many of them geared towards energy savings and other aspects of green living.

One of the projects highlighted in the first three episodes is the Cleantech Teaching Center, a state of the art showcase home located in Beverly, MA.  This house features an entirely LED lighting system, rainwater recovery system, geothermal energy, and solar photovoltaic panels.  Sustainable materials were used throughout the interior, including Trend USA’s lovely Trend Q recycled glass tile.  Cleantech Homes, LLC has applied for LEED PLatinum status for the home. Read the rest of this entry »

Remodeling your kitchen?  Designing a fancy new restaurant?  Just looking for something amazing and sustainable?  Here are 6 reasons you should consider recycled glass tile…

Mosaic “wallpaper” by Trend USA

1.  Recycled glass takes only 50% of the energy to produce that virgin glass does.

Oceanside Glasstile

2.  Recycled glass  can be made into any form, color, or shape you can imagine. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m very pleased to welcome Emerald Atkins as a contributing blogger for TIR.  A talented writer, jewelry maker and mother, Emerald will be providing us with a series of in-depth profiles of some of the wonderful artisans involved in sustainable furnishings and crafts.   To begin the series, she has interviewed my favorite handmade tile maker, Bronwyn Simons.  Enjoy!

Quality, tradition, sustainability, an artful approach to life and business…  In Terra Home’s rural studio in the heart of Denman Island, in British Columbia, founder Bronwyn Simons pursues all these ideals.  For her sustainability is not just a business practice but a reflection of the philosophy that guides her life.

Beauty in the everyday.  Serenity in a single tile.

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(clockwise from top) "Gold Coast", "Pompeii", raw safety glass in bag

Quick story – When I was a little girl, I found some broken windshield glass in the alley near our home.  My mother, being the crafty sort at the time, decided to bring it home to experiment with.  Her project, as I recall, involved gluing the pieces of glass around a flower pot for a sort of sparkly mosaic effect.   We’ll never know what the end result might have been, since my toddler sister decided that tempered glass would make a delicious appetizer to the lunch my mother had left the room to make.   Although a frantic trip to the doctor revealed no lasting damage, the great tempered glass experiment quickly made it’s way to the trash, never to be tried again.

I’m so happy that Ellen Blakeley, artist and owner of Ellen Blakeley Studio, had better results!  Just look at the amazing tiles she has created from recycling tempered glass…

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