For the past two years I've come up with projects that focus on recycling/upcycling things that my coworkers usually throw in the trash. A lot of people are doing this, but all too often the end result doesnt look like a quality item. Or its just plain ugly. I've decided the secondary requirement for these projects is that they must be things that my consumerist, non-hippy friends would want to have or use on a daily basis.
The first project was to construct a project out of the retired foam core that my company uses to print signs for the lobby. The signs are up for maybe a month, and then are tossed or given away. I was able to score 2 retired signs, and decided to make myself a jewelry board. I'd never thought of displaying my jewelry when I wasn't wearing it, but I came across the idea while browsing the Instructables site. I happen to think my jewelry is very attractive (which is why i have it), so why not display it for all to see? Besides, its much more organized than my previous solution, shown below. Here's a link to the Instructable I've created for the jewelry board I made.
For my second project I wanted to reuse some of the plastic bags that I've been collecting from coworkers for a while. I used the old stand-by, Plastic Bag crochet, to create a new trendy bag with a soft feel, but visually sharp corners. If you'd like the pattern, let me know and I'll write it up.
