Forks + Vise-Grips + unmarked plants + inspiration =

A great new way to label your plants

I've been slowly turning my front living room into an herb garden. Some plants I bought as small seedlings, but a few I am trying to grow from seed. I can remember the names of the larger plants but I can't tell the difference between a catnip sprout or a thyme sprout. I needed markers for my plants , but didn't want the garden variety plastic markers or even marked tongue depressors. Browsing the web I came upon these lovely spoon and fork markers. This was all the inspiration I needed to create my very own plant markers. Using some old silver plated forks I had, a pair of vise grips (I bet pliers would have worked better if I could have found them), some nice paper and a free front I found here (I used Olde English found under medieval) I created my masterpiece.
I still need a few more forks to label everything, but my husband still has some in his car (don't ask why we keep our silver plate forks there, its a long story), so when he gets home I can finish these.
It really is fairly easy to bend the prongs, although my palms are a bit sore. I'm not sure if one needs silver or silver plate for this to work, as those are usually a softer metal ( i think), or if any old fork will suffice.

Plastic Beach Bag in Progess

Yes, plastic bags can be recycled, and yes, I could be better at remember my millions of reusable bags at the grocery store, but when I get too many plastic bags; i.e. the cabinet under the sink is overflowing with them, this is what I do:



I crochet them into reusable bags. Currently I'm working on a "beach" bag. I'm not the best crocheter ever, but the plastic yarn (plarn) seems to be fairly forgiving. The most complicated part is making the "plarn". Its not even that complicated, mostly just labor intensive.
It's ultimate recycling I think, which is my favorite way to craft.

Bottlecap art

I save pretty much everything, i.e.plastic bags, bottle caps, glass bottles, coffee tins, bread tags, etc., pretty much anything that could be used for some sort of crafty purpose. After awhile I amassed quite a collection of beer caps. Last winter I created a mirror re purposing an old IKEA mirror into a bottlecapped mirror hot gluing the bottle caps and then later grouting it. I gave it to my beer loving roommate for Christmas and he loved it. Lucky for my its hanging in a shared living space so I get to look at it for a while longer.

This essentially wiped out my bottle cap collection for awhile, but I finally decided I had too many again and moved on to the next project.

I needed art for my bare living room so I used my many red-hued caps to create a heart shape on particle board and then filled the edges with mostly green, siliver and black caps. I still need to figure out a way to hang it but for now it leans against the fireplace.














I really love how it's a mosiac that from a distance doesn't scream bottlecaps or that perhaps we drink too much beer. Between these two projects only one of the caps was a soda cap...