Metal wall art, made from recycled aluminum cans by Transcendant Treasure.  These pin up onto the wall in any configuration you want.

Love Pillow sewn from recycled plastic bottle felt by Personal Pillow.  The heart is a pocket you can hide a little note or treat in.

Light a torch in your loved one’s heart with this red current scented, 100% soy wax candle from Torch Illumination.

A heart you can step on and not feel guilty!  This heart shaped rug is made of recycled t-shirts by Talking Squid (you just have to love that shop name!).

Simple and sweet, these scrap wood blocks from Uniquely Different Too spell it out for all to see.  And hey, if things don’t work out, you can always switch them around and claim you have an unabashed fondness for voles.

A bit over the top, but maybe that’s why it looks so fun.  This refurbished vanity chair is by Picks4U.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, this is for the narcissist in us all…  Made by Upcountry Design in Hawaii from old, corrugated iron roofing, this mirror can also be fitted with a light kit that really makes it glow.

“My love is like a read, read rose” (my apologies to Robert Burns – well, his ghost anyway).  This pretty, recycled book page rose is by The Mad Recycler.

Lastly, we have this sweet little distressed wood frame by Katie Herman Designs.  Made from reclaimed oak flooring, it has oodles of old fashioned charm.  Yes, I said “oodles”.  We all have our favorite words…

Thanks for visiting!

Rachel

Vigor, the seriously awesome, recycled, drag racing steampunk dragon sculpture by Etsy artisans Reclaim2Fame.

Just look at that face!

And look at that attention to detail.  Love!

The Year of the Dragon is considered the luckiest of the twelve years in the Chinese zodiac.  Whoever snaps up this amazing little guy will be lucky indeed.

By the way, if the price tag for Vigor has you spitting your coffee out on the screen, take heart.  Reclaim2Fame also makes more affordable sculptures, like this adorable robot dog.

Thanks for visiting!

Rachel

With their line of wallcoverings, Weitzner Limited neatly puts all that nonsense to rest.

Although certainly luxurious in the sense of being well-crafted, Weitzner’s creations are also, by turns, whimsical, arresting, soothing, classical, or all of these at once.

“We like to challenge our client’s perception of what a wallcovering can be by creating innovative materials that evoke curiosity, calm and beauty,” touts the company website.  “Then we add environmental consciousness and performance (class A ratings) into the mix.”

On offer are more than a hundred wallcoverings that contribute to LEED points.  Many of the styles contain recycled pulp or rapidly renewable materials (derived from plants that are harvested on a ten-year or shorter cycle).

A star among these styles is Newsworthy, which is 100% recycled and recyclable.  Newsprint strips are hand-woven on a loom and then paperbacked to make the product wall-ready.  As an unexpected alternative to traditional grasscloth Newsworthy has many charms, among them true variability – the weave teases the senses and, on close examination, the brain, for all the thousands of tiny textual snippets beg to tell their stories.

Movie lovers will enjoy Cinema Posters, a similar product woven from reclaimed movie posters.

My personal favorites are Currents, which looks stunning framed between glass, and Eden, with which a designer could achieve some pleasing effects with light and shadow.

Special care must be taken while cutting all these products – Weitzner recommends using a new, clean blade for each cut – and several require dry cleaning. The website contains specifics on each design.  It also features a specialized clickable search engine to help designers find the exact look they need.

~ Emerald

I found you this recycled t-shirt pillow from Upcycled2, just in time for Friday the 13th.  Figured you could use the extra luck!

Have a great weekend, and thanks for visiting!

Rachel

No, it’s not their presence in a landfill.  Not if Fireclay Tile has any say in the matter.

Since its founding in 1986 the San Jose, CA, company has striven to minimize its environmental impact.  The product is hand-molded from extruded clays using recycled materials, unprocessed stoneware clays, and minerals, so each tile has its own natural character.  Glazes are mixed in-house and never contain any lead material.

Fireclay recycles its kiln heat, water, and all manufacturing waste, which is then re-used in other parts of the business.  99% of all scrap clay is recycled back into new tile and 80% of all glaze over-spray is collected and recycled.  Waste not, want not.

In particular they produce two tile lines to which I’d like to draw your attention.

The first, Crush Recycled Glass Tile, is 100% post-consumer glass taken from curbside recycling programs.  The tile comes in glossy or matte finish and is available in 17 different size formats, including field (square or rectangular), rounds, triangles, diamonds, hexagons, mosaic sheets, rails, and three types of borders.  Customers can choose from a range of 40 colors.  This handmade tile can be substituted for ceramic & natural stone products in most applications and is ideal for projects seeking LEED certification.

The second, Debris Series Recycled Tile, has a more complex story.

Like Crush, Debris is produced using locally-sourced post-consumer waste glass.  It also contains reclaimed porcelain and granite dust, which is a by-product of industrial asphalt production.  Altogether these materials combine to give Debris a whopping 70% recycled material content – not only reserving hundreds of tons a year from the local landfills but also halving the energy use required to make conventional tile.  Wow!

Debris comes in 112 natural, lead-free glaze colors.  It is offered in field sizes ranging from 1”x2” to 12”x12”, along with a large selection of trim, moldings, raised and relief tiles, and also hand-painted Cuerda Seca tile.

Alongside the company’s environmental commitment the people of Fireclay strive to “give back” to their community by means of product donations, ceramic teaching programs, and factory tours for students.  The company also seeks non-profit organizations which can put secondary and overstock tile to good use.

But check them out for yourself.  There’s a lot to learn on the Fireclay website , and their Inspiration Gallery is just that.

~ Emerald

And just as the name implies, Leslie Dickinson is crazy about belts.  Lots and lots of old belts – all woven together to form the seating for chairs she has refurbished.

I swear I see one of the of the funky black leather belts I used to wear back in college…

Are you more country than rock and roll?  There are chairs for you too.

These Shaker style ladder back chairs would work in a modern entrance hall just as well as they would in a traditional breakfast room.

This little oval footrest is so cute, I just want to pinch its cheeks – if it had any.

Leslie also does custom orders, so you can request just the color mix of belts you want.  I’d love to see one done in nothing but 80′s electric blue!  Wonder if I still have any of those lying around here,…

You can check out her other creations in her Etsy store, or on her website.

Thanks for visiting!

Rachel

You decide.

There’s simplicity in these glass and steel designs, a clean look, one that’s versatile enough to be used in any number of decoration schemes.  I think they would complement just about any setting.

As much as possible, the materials are reclaimed objects.  Old glass & ceramic insulators, traffic light lenses, and hardened steel parts – the clips, spikes, and random hardware so abundant along unused rail lines – all hand-gathered by the artist and repurposed into lighting, door & cabinet hardware, and home furnishings.

The disparate parts are cut, drilled, sanded, ground, and bent where needed before being given their new purpose.  Although the creations are thoroughly cleaned the rust remains and is, according to the artist, an “essential part of the look.”  Even the new sections of steel are purposefully rusted so that the entire is whole.  Then comes a steel sealer and hand-rubbed oil finish.

So what was once abandoned is again made functional.

The business sprang, almost by chance, from Tim’s long-term interest in lighting and a collection that started with the purchase of a single glass insulator back in 2004.  Now he crafts a full line… as well as custom work, some of which can be seen here.

There’s much more to the story than this, however.  To learn it, please stop by the RailroadWare website.

~ Emerald

In honor of the day, here are a couple of wonderful, recycled Army blanket pillows I thought you might like to take a look at.

Created by Etsy seller Shop at Ten, these pillows are made from old Army blankets that are then hand felted with fun new patterns.

Here, a series of patches added to the blanket over time were surrounded with colorful, needle-felted roving, becoming a wonderful pattern of irregular squares.  What many would see as a flaw has instead become an inspired design.

You can see more of Shop at Ten’s work here.

Thanks for visiting – and don’t forget to give a Veteran a hug today.  They deserve it, and so much more!

Rachel

Created by Etsy seller Ann Tucker, of The Lavendar Tree, out of a recycled wool blanket and recycled leather scraps, this pillow was tailor made for life on a cozy sofa in front of the fireplace, don’t you think?

Cut and stitched to the pillow by hand, the leather rosettes provide just the right balance of randomness to the regimented nature of the stripes.

And if you were to get it as a gift (Christmas is on it’s way folks!), then it would come all wrapped up and ready to give in this lovely craft paper wrap, with ribbon made of recycled t-shirt strips, and a pretty felt rose to boot.  Love it!

Thanks for visiting, and have a great weekend!

Rachel

If you are in the SoCal area in November, you couldn’t find a better thing to do than go see The Dunnage Show at Inheritance.  A collaboration of all the members of L.A. Box Collective, the exhibit will showcase what happened to 12 tons of dunnage – headed to the landfill – when this creative group of master woodworkers got hold of it.  Expect amazing pieces of furniture and accessories, if their previous work is anything to go by!

Place:  Inheritance – 8055 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90048-4517  ph (323) 658-6756

Date: Opening reception November 3rd, 2011 from 7-10PM

RSVP: BoxCoEvents@gmail.com