Upcycling Christmas Hedgehogs!

                                    

I popped into the offices of the charity +Carers Gloucestershire the other day to find out how they are literally cannibalising landfill fodder to turn into items for sale in their shop. In the picture above they are creating hedgehogs from books. Below, this string of Christmas bunting was created using old socks and jumper sleeves and is now adorning the mirror in my dining room. 

The activity of upcycling unloved items kills two, if not three, birds with one stone. It is perfect for bringing together the people the charity assists to do something fun together. Attractive items are created that can be sold and otherwise useless stuff can be re-invented into something desirable. A Win win situation!

+Carers Gloucestershire exists to enhance the lives of unpaid carers - people looking after sick family members or neighbours. They can find themselves leading isolated, often impecunious lives and the charity advises them on how to maximise their income as well as organising fun events and social interaction. Esther, left in the top picture, is not only a full time carer, she also runs subgroup Hucclecote Carers which is one of 60 of the charity's subgroups.    

The day I called in at their offices, these ladies were busy folding abandoned books into very weird shapes... 

 

....called "hedgehogs"!


The hedgehogs sell for £3.00 and are snapped up at Christmas fairs.  The charity organisers and their helpers are often assisted by office workers from local companies such as insurance company + Ecclesiastical across the road. While I was there Louise from Finance dropped in during her lunch break to help out at the crafting table. The idea is catching on with her colleagues who give up lunch hours to donate time to the cause.



Some have a few skills to offer as is clear from the jewellery they helped make from a broken necklace in a recent session.

The tea and egg cosies below were made with donated wool and the Xmas baubles by imaginative minds using upcycled materials.

Schools have also been involved such as Cheltenham's grammar school +Pates making items in their art lessons.

Do you know of any charity that is being helped out by local companies in this way? Especially in a way that uses existing resources imaginatively - just like +Carers Gloucestershire?

Great tip - where to find cheap recycled materials this Xmas!

The Scrapstore in Gloucester is part of a 30 year old network of 90 such scrap depositories across the UK. It is a brilliantly clever charity that collects unwanted but suitable scrap from industry and puts it up for sale to families,students and groups for creative upcycling.

My trip to the Gloucester  Scrapstore above felt like stumbling in a sugar-deprived state on a candy-bejewelled gingerbread house! For a mere £6-12 you can load a shopping trolley with leftover industrial stuff, unloved discarded fabric and all manner of excess-to-requirements plastic thingies gifted by the county's businesses. For a short taste of what I mean see the video below.

The pity of it - to my entrepreneurial mind - is that it is not open to small craftspeople busy trying to scratch a living from making and selling beautiful objects from recycled materials. Well, yes, you can take out

A Great British Wrap-up

Artist Karen Green's "The Painter's Pantry" produces a smorgasbord of deliciously innovative items out of recycled materials for artists.  She paints too and I couldn't resist reproducing her portrait of the swaddled Peruvian baby above. The theme of swaddling, or wrapping, is key to much of what Karen otherwise makes - flawlessly sewn material wraps for storing artists' tools using upcycled fabric.

"I just find great satisfaction in being able to make someone’s ‘rubbish’ into beautiful items to be loved again." Karen Green  

It is with other peoples' "rubbish" that Karen creates a larder of goodies for artists which includes wraps for brushes, pencils or pins and needles collections. She also packs away buttons into spice bottles, creates sewing boxes out of spice racks and hand stitches sketch books.

Pencil Wrap £10-12

Paintbrushes Wrap £12-15

       

Pins and Needles Wrap £5-6

Karen is a trained primary school teacher, artist and screen and stage costume designer with a very thrifty streak! She literally haunts charity shops for swatches of lovely cloth that she can use to create the wraps and is a big supporter of buying local. Upcycling just comes naturally because she has always reached for the nearest leftovers to make her creations.

Vintage Fabrics with Tales to Tell

Amy Bluett of Anecdotalist; maker of handmade bags, banners and other fabric goods

A while ago I was visiting the Vintage Pop Up Market in London’s Spitalfields when I found myself coming to a dead halt by Amy Bluett’s stall. It was draped in handmade bags and banners adorned with vintage materials and above swung a banner spelling out Anecdotalist. 

I moved in to find out more.

It was a cold day and we both had red noses but Amy’s articulate passion for her fabrics-with-a-story-to-tell animated us both – this was clearly a case requiring a blog posting! 

Amy set up Anecdotalist in October 2012 to sell items made of fabrics with a past – sometimes mysterious, sometimes avant-garde, occasionally run-of-the-mill but certainly worth recounting by Amy to her customers hence the name. A thoughtful, informed person, Amy's whole ethos, including her products made from recycled materials, is entirely in synch with the zeitgeist’s cutting edge.  

Upcycling tiny tea-stained thieves

Grace Lane and two of her mice

I spotted Grace Lane and her collection of hand-made animals at the hugely popular Crafty Fox Market at the Dogstar in Brixton just before Easter.

Perhaps a little diffident, she has an attractive, almost fey presence which works well in tandem with her magical array of animal characters, "A Threadbear Production".  The animals aren't just magical, feckless even! They all look entirely capable of "borrowing" a button off your coat, a few stray hairs off your collar or the silver paper off your chewing gum wrapper. This is because they are modelled after miniature thieves.

Count the items Grace has "recycled" on her borrowing bears!

Grace has long been inspired by her passion for Mary Norton's book "The Borrowers" about a family
of tiny people who live by borrowing off the Big People. Each animal is unique and kitted out in once grand (now threadbear) materials that might well have been snitched from an aristocratic pile of cast offs. The vintage fabrics include Harris Tweeds, silk velvets and organic linens. They are all accessorised with "found" objects.  Grace makes clever use of discarded junk like old match boxes and minuscule silver foil hats and she distresses and stains the fabrics with tea to achieve that long-lived in look!

Grace is in her last term of university at London College of Fashion studying Costume for Performance.  She enjoys playing with scale and finds second hand, vintage and recycled materials have a much richer quality to them that works well. Her artistic relations often lend a hand in the creation of the animals; her mother with the sewing, and her uncle by providing the odd bit of vintage fabric or embroidery. By the way, the standard animals sell for around £170-£200 although commissioned ones may cost a little more.

Grace has plans for "A Threadbear Production" and may animate a few of the characters so remember, you read about her first, here!