Old bed frame pieces used as garden borders / fences.
(photo via 33 Barefoot Lane)
Everyday plastic items, artfully arranged.
Installation by Mary Ellen Croteau; we featured her plastic bottle cap portrait earlier on Unconsumption here.
See also: Artist Jean Shin’s displays of empty pill bottles.
It’s wine o’clock (somewhere), so time to share an adult beverage-related repurposing find.
Today, it’s Champagne corks used as bike handlebar caps. (photo by Jon Heslop)
For earlier items in Unconsumption’s wine o’clock series, check out the archive here.
Cheers!
Cup of tea, anyone?
Some 3,000 tea bags (yes, you read that right!) make up this installation at Rolling Greens, a “home and garden destination” in Los Angeles. (Spotted on Pinterest here. Source: Los Angeles, I’m Yours, which features additional photos.)
See also: Quilt made from steeped tea bags.
How would you describe this example of repurposing? Beautiful? Or not your cup of tea?
Brooklyn-based artist Marc Andre Robinson turns discarded furniture into eye-catching sculptural assemblages.
(via My Modern Met)
DIY idea du jour:
Recover worn furniture with used paint sticks. Colorful and rustic looking, for sure.
To help in gathering sticks, tell your neighbors you’re collecting sticks. Also, ask staff at a store that sells paint to keep their used sticks for you.
(Photo by matangi.etsy on Flickr; spotted on Pinterest here.)
Those of you who have been following Unconsumption for a while — either here on Tumblr, or on Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, and/or Twitter — probably know that I (Molly) have a thing for vintage rulers, yardsticks, and measuring tapes. (Yes, an Unconsumption Pinterest board devoted to vintage measuring tools does exist!)
So, when I came across an Etsy blog post on Vanessa Boer, I found myself drawn to several of Vanessa’s repurposed-ruler creations, particularly the pieces pictured here that incorporate vintage pencils.
Nice!
Looking for some simple, DIY ideas for green Easter decor?
We’ve rounded up several ideas, including this cute basket — just weave strips of paper or ribbon through a strawberry basket’s slots (great idea via Parentella blog!) — on this Unconsumption Pinterest board.
See also: Our Easter-tagged items on Tumblr.
The beginnings of a school bus conversion into a mobile garden!
I’m a sucker for mobile gardens. And creative reuses for cars and buses.
Plastic, strung. Installation at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, July 2009. (Photo via Betty Birney’s Blog.)
Don’t you think something like this would make a unique room divider?
The Internet is full of ideas for ways to reuse pallet wood. We here at Unconsumption certainly have shared a good number of them. (Browse our Pinterest board here, Tumblr archive here, and/or Facebook album here for various examples, including several ideas for DIY projects.)
If pallet repurposing interests you, and you’ve been wondering how to go about disassembling pallets, here’s a brief tutorial from Old World Garden Farms that looks like it could be helpful.
I’m guessing that most of us don’t own the tool the tutorial recommends using: a reciprocating saw (a.k.a. “sawzall”) that can cut through nails. If, like me, you don’t own one, perhaps you live someplace where there’s a tool bank where you could rent such a tool, or a tool library where you could borrow one?
Special note: For reuse projects, many of us look for pallets that are made from harder wood that, if it’s been treated, was heat-treated, not chemical-treated. We mention it on Facebook here.
