Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Using arts & crafts to abide by the 3 R’s
October 21st, 2008For a number of reasons, recently, I’ve made an effort to think about my consumption habits a bit more lately. Becoming my own boss has encouraged me to become a bit more frugal with my spending. By putting a recycling box in my office, I’ve realised how much paperwork I either piled up in folders unnecessarily or threw out without thinking.
That was recycling tackled, but clearing out some cupboards and boxes made me realise just how many birthday, Christmas, house move, anniversary and other cards we accumulate.
So this is my call to friends and family to reuse, or let me reuse, old cards this Christmas. If you live nearby, I’ll happily take them off your hands. If you’re further away, drop me a line. I want to try to give magazines, cards, photos and material a new life, however it ends up being used. It also hopefully means I can avoid buying tacky cards, pre-filled with a meaningless Hallmark holiday greetings and write the cards myself. (Oh boy, I’m going to be annoyed I said this when I run out of time and ideas for the cards three days before Xmas…)
There are so many feel-good reasons to reuse stuff wherever possible. It’s less stuff to throw away, and occasionally, there’s the sentimental value of reusing something that otherwise would have had a short-lived lifespan. So that’s the “Reuse” element (sort of) ticked off.
And then there’s the “Reduce” factor. Well, I’ve curbed my buying-of-random-stuff to an extent, but developing an addiction to crafts means that while I’m buying less expensive gadgets, I’m spending on new crafts material like a Cuttlebug and a bunch of embossing goodies. (As an aside, there’s a definite trend in arts & crafts websites being utterly horrible and unusable. I would love to help them make their sites fun to use, and as good looking as the products they sell!)
So I’m not doing well at reducing the amount of stuff I own, but soon, I’ll write about someone who was more successful at not buying stuff (for a whole year!) than I was.
[Card on the right not by me, but by Paperminiskirt on Etsy.com, one of the best sites for cute handmade stuff. Like eBay for hippies and artists.]

These are just awesome! I would absolutely love to have power button earrings.
Many many years ago. i was in college taking architectural drafting while my brother was at a prestigious school for fashion design. As much as I loved my career choice I couldnt help but see my brother using very similar skills in building patterns and creating products he loved. Thats when I decided that not only did I want to draft and design, I wanted to build. Knowing that I wasnt about to build a house, I started to dabble in my brothers homework projects.
I did sell locally within my city (Vancouver B.C.) I would take my finished products with business cards to stores and work. I have done some craft fairs and was lucky enough to sell a few in some stores. Since I was spending 40-50 hours a week at my office job, I was never able to concentrate fully on my products.

Paris is already nerve-grating without opening her mouth, but for her to release an album is just an insult to real music. We can only thank Banksy for kindly replacing the CDs with a healthier alternative.