go green Archives - Studio Katie

PWP Garden Journal

Happy Earth Day! Today I’m up on the PWP blog sharing this fun garden journal I made. I’ve got all kinds of yummy vegetables planted in my garden and I’ll be using this journal to keep track of how many I get.

Click here to hop over to the PWP blog to see my journal, and see how I made the vellum embellishments on the cover. Here’s a peek at my garden. I’m super excited to get some cucumbers and banana peppers!

Uncategorized

Recycled Book Planter DIY

I saw a version of this at our local Half Price Books and I decided I had to have one. 😉

I know a lot of people feel like cutting up books is a horrible thing to do, however I think it gives books a new life. I love reading and I love books, but I don’t mind cutting them up as well. If you do though, check out your local thrift store or half price books for old encyclopedias that are outdated and no longer used.

For the plants, I recommend succulents because they don’t require much water which means your book will hold up much longer. I chose Baby Toe and Stone Face succulents. They don’t grow large and I think they’re really cool. Like life forms, which is why I chose a Star Trek book. 🙂

Supplies: Hardback Book at least 1-2 inches thick, Craft Knife, Potting Soil, Small Succulents

1. Fold the first few pages of your book over and glue them down to the cover. Sketch a rectangle onto your book.

2. Using your craft knife, Cut along the lines you drew, removing pieces of the pages.

3. Continue cutting until you have a large enough hole.

4. Fill your hole with a small amount of potting soil and add in your succulents.

Uncategorized

Recycle Those Old Coffee Mugs into Planters with Kam.

This Earth Day, get your hands a little dirty with some good old fashioned container gardening!

While the image above may make you think we’re going to make some holiday gifts a few months too early, the real project today is about reusing household items into some fun planters!

Why reuse old items?

To save money
To save you a trip to the store
It is better for the environment
It will make the story behind your project even cuter!

You know what else is good for the environment? Plants! I selected some small succulents to use for this project because they do will both indoors and outdoors with the bonus fact that they are very low maintenance.

For this project you will need:

Mugs…or any other container you have around your house. Bonus points for cuteness
Some activated carbon if these plants will be indoors (found near indoor plants at the nursery or at pet stores by the aquariums)
Decorative rocks
Plants of appropriate size (I’m using 1 inch succulents from the flea market)
Soil (I’m using soil specifically design for cacti/succulents, but anything will do)

Project Time:

5-10 minutes, depending on the number of plants you have and how often you break to take photos

Steps:

Gather your supplies and move outdoors, if possible

If your plants will be indoors…scoop a healthy layer of carbon into your container, covering the bottom of the container

Add a layer of rocks above the carbon (or add a layer of rocks to the bottom, if your planters will be outdoors). You are creating a barrier between your carbon and the soil

Add soil almost to the top of your container

Remove succulent from packaging and remove a bit of the soil from the bottom to promote rooting

Add succulent to your container, gently pushing soil around to make room

Once the succulents are in place and secure, add rocks around the base and cover the soil. Your succulents like to be hugged by these rocks and they will help with moisture control

If the plants are particularly dry, give them a few squirts with a squirt bottle, but not too much!

Dust off the leaves of your plants and you’re done!

Other container ideas: Mason jars, vases, vintage planters, soup bowls, vintage Pyrex, an old fish bowl.

While Earth Day is only once a year, you can add to your garden with these reused containers practically year round!

What do you have around your home that can be used in your garden?

Kam is behind Campfire Chic, a blog focusing on the her life as crafty camper with a penchant for social media, organization, and lists. Kam lives in Southern California with her boyfriend and works full time in addition to Campfire Chic. She is currently working on a quilt made out of vintage sheets, her first attempt at Project Life, and planning her next outdoor adventure. Follow Kam on Twitter for up-to-the-second updates or the Campfire Chic newsletter for less frequent (but still fun!) updates.

A note from Katie- I love the idea of reusing old coffee mugs and other random objects to use as planters! Thanks, Kam, for a wonderful idea!

Uncategorized

Recycled Spool Mini Album

Do you sew, or quilt? Even if you don’t do it very often, you still go through spools of thread, right? Do you reuse them once they are empty or do you just chunk them?

This is a fun way to save them from the trash can, and it can be made as a gift or for yourself!

Supplies: Old Thread Spool, Pictures, Sewing Machine, Twine or Embroidery Thread, Strong Adhesive, Misc Scrapbooking Embellishments.

1. Print your pictures as Wallet Sized. This gets them small enough, although depending on the size of your spool you might have to crop them even smaller.

2. Make sure they are the right size, I did have to crop mine down to 1&1/2″ x 3&1/2″. You want the picture to fit between the 2 edges of your spool, like so–

3. Cover the back of your pictures with pretty paper, Or if you want to be even more Eco-friendly, back them with recycled papers! Junk mail, book pages, newspaper, etc.

4. Line up 2 of your pictures side by side, and sew them together using a zig zag stitch.

NOTE- there are many ways that you could bind this. I chose to sew them because I thought it went good with the spool. Another way you could do it is by sticking washi tape on the 2 photos.

3. Attach all of your photos together, so you have them all in 1 strip.

4. Taking the edge of your photo strip and your spool, use a strong adhesive to attach the edge of your photo to your spool. Let dry.

5. You can add a few stickers and embellishments to your photos if you wish.

6. Cut a 5″ piece (or longer if you want.) of twine, ribbon or embroidery floss and stitch one end to the edge of your first photo.

Wrap your photos around your spool (tightly!) and then continue wrapping around it with the string. When you get to the end of your string, just wrap it under itself to make it stay.

Here is another spool mini album I’ve made… I hand stitched the photos together instead of using the machine. I also added bling to the top of my vintage spool. 🙂

Do you like to make mini albums out of random things? I do. 🙂

Uncategorized

Restyled Glitter Flower Pot DIY with Natt

Hello everyone.

Natt Smith here as a guest post today for Earth day project.

I love flower but living in Colorado for me it’s a heart broken to see all my flower died in winter.

So I figured out it is better to just plant a lot of indoor plants.

Every corner in my home have flower in a vase or pots.

Flower pots has simply become home deco.

So today Earth day project is how to make glitter pot for you indoor plants.

What do you need ?

– Clay pot.

– Martha Stewart glitter acrylic paint.

– Paint brush.

How to ?

– It can be a little bit trickier when you want to paint this pot in another color beside this gold color. You might have to applied Modpodge first to get it into the color you want.

– Paint glitter acrylic paint onto pot.

– Wait 15 mins until it completely die and repeat 3 times

– You can also add twine and fabric tag like I did to give it to someone as a gift.

Let’s take a closer look.

Glitter Acrylic laid nicely on the pot.

That’s it everyone, for my Earth day project. Hopefully it will help inspired you to plant more flower and add more green to this lovely planet we’re in.

Don’t forget to stop by at my blog HERE and see what kind of giveaway I have for you.

A note from Katie- WOW, that flower pot is so pretty now, isn’t it? Natt did an amazing job, be sure to stop by her blog and be inspired.

Uncategorized

Salvaging a Book + GIVEAWAY- Guest Post from Mou…

Hi
everyone, Mou Saha here from
Creating Keepsakes magazine. In spirit of
green crafting, I had been salvaging an old book into my current art journal.
Here’s a spread from that book.

Here
are my steps in visuals and captions.

Hope
you enjoyed my little process tutorial and would give it a try.

If
you like upcycling the stuff of life, you might enjoy the 4-week workshop I’m
teaching at Big Picture Classes called Lift Me Up!

-GIVEAWAY-

Please
leave a comment to this post about your favorite thing to upcycle and ONE
person can win a spot in the workshop. For more chances of winning, please
check out my blog. Winner will
be announced on 4/18/2012.

Good
luck J

Uncategorized

Make it Monday

Good Morning you guys! How was your Easter weekend? Did you travel, hunt eggs, craft? We spent the weekend camping, It was lovely.

Make cute Bottle Cap Magnets using this tutorial.

These Bracelets are made from cardboard and some embroidery floss. Learn how to make them here.

Upcycle old DVD Cases into an Accordion Picture Frame using this DIY.

Have some Vintage Buttons laying around? Reuse them and make this lovely bracelet!

It’s almost Summer, Upcycle those Sweaters into a cute Patchwork Bed for your pet. 😉

Recycle Paint Chips into fun Coasters using this tutorial.

Turn Junk Mail into Paper Beads using this DIY.

Uncategorized

Upcycled Gift Card Mini Album DIY

Do you have tons of empty gift cards that you were given? Or maybe you collected them once, but now they just sit in a pile somewhere? This mini album is a great use for them!

Supplies: Old Gift Cards, Hole Punch (I used a crop-o-dile), Pretty Papers, Pictures, Scissors, Twine or Ribbon.

1. Punch a hole a corner of all your gift cards.

2. Cover the backs with either pretty scrapbooking papers, or small pictures. (or both!

3. Repunch the holes through the papers.

4. To bind it, just thread your twine or ribbon through the holes on your gift cards and then just tie it closed!

You could decorate the front if you want. I liked the LOVE giftcard, so I left it blank.

I think these would make a fun gift for someone. You could add pictures of them + you onto the backs of the gift cards, you could also add in some journaling.

Uncategorized

One Step Candy Wrapper Frame DIY from Katie

Hi Everybody! I’m Katie from Running With A Glue Gun and I’m so happy to be guest blogging at Punk Projects. Today I’m going to be showing you guys an eco friendly craft project that involves candy wrappers. Since Easter is upon us we will probably have a lot of candy wrapper lying around, so why not use them and make a fun frame.

One Step Candy Wrapper Frame DIY

Supplies

Frame

Mod Podge in Glossy

Foam Brush

Candy Wrappers ( I’m using Reese’s Mini Easter Eggs)

Step 1: Take the glass out of your frame. Then put a generous amount of Mod Podge on your frame, then apply your candy wrappers. When your using the Mod Podge don’t be afraid to cover the top of your candy wrapper with the glue. By doing this your making a better bond for the wrappers to stay on the frame and your creating a nice looking finish on top. Keep doing this all the way around your frame until your frame is completely covered.

Then your done! All I did to finish this project, was cut a piece of scrapbooking paper to size and put two photos of my dog from last years Easter in the frame. Now think of all the pictures you have of past Easters and even Halloweens. Make your own candy wrapper frame and show all those pictures off.

Thank you, Katie, for guest posting! Your picture frame is the cutest!!

Uncategorized

Create a Recycled Notebook with EEF.

Hi everyone! This is Erin from EEF Etcetera and I’ve got a fun DIY for you! I wanted to make a simple tutorial that anyone can do, using things that you would otherwise throw out. I literally just grabbed things that were about to go in the trash and made this cute little notebook (with ephemera pockets!). It’s a quick DIY and only took me about 15 minutes (including taking the photos!), so grab some trash and get to crafting!

You will need:

Thin cardboard (I used the back of an old notebook, you could also use a cereal box)
Paper (I used 5 sheets of barely-printed-on computer paper, you could also use notebook paper, magazine paper, etc. depending on what you want to use your book for)
An envelope (mine was from a birthday card I got this year and is 5×7)
Scissors and/or a paper cutter
Needle and embroidery thread
Push pins (optional, not pictured)

First you will need to make all of your pieces the same size. You can’t cut the envelope and still put things in it, so the envelope will determine your page size. I cut my 5 sheets of paper into 10 (which when folded makes 40 pages). Cut your cardboard slightly larger than the envelope and paper.

Fold everything in half (get a good crease on everything), and then stack it, cardboard on the bottom, envelope, and then paper. Fold them all together.

If you have a lot of pages like I do, you’ll probably have the middle sticking out a bit. This bothers me, so I trim the middle down to size (don’t trim your envelope!).

Okay, now that they line up I’m happier! It’s time to sew this book together!

My needle wasn’t sharp enough to punch through all of the pages and the envelope and cardboard so I punched through with two push pins. I used two so that the pages don’t move between me punching one hole and then the other.

From the inside of the book, sew through to the outside. Don’t pull the thread all the way through!

Now from the back, go ahead and sew back into the middle, being careful not to pull the thread out!

You should end up like this!

Make sure you pull the ends tight enough so that the book stays together. Shorten up your thread so you don’t waste it, and tie a knot. Clip the ends.

You can be finished now if you want, but I think it looks a little plain!

I added some rub-on letters, but you can decorate your book however you like. Make sure your design matches where the top of your envelope is! (you don’t want your pockets upside down!)

Did you notice you’ve got two pockets? One on the front and one in the back. My envelope was really torn so I stuck a sticker on it to keep things from falling out of the front pocket. If you open your envelopes less destructively, you probably wont need to do this.

Use your book however you want! It can be a journal, notebook, art journal, or anything you want! Use the pockets to store ephemera or stickers/small supplies to use for on-the-go journaling.

Honestly, I’m going to be boring and use mine for grocery lists (because it’s such a waste to use a new sheet of paper on a grocery list) and keep coupons in the pockets. I might make an art journal this way soon though, because it’s super-easy and fast!

Hope you liked the tutorial!

Visit me here: blog | twitter | etsy | pinterest | portfolio