The Beauty in Single Use Plastics

One of the things I love most about working with reclaimed single-use plastic trash is that, in its own weird way, it’s beautiful.

That may sound nuts, but this stuff is all designed by someone to attract our attention. The bright colors, the fun patterns - all are intended to get our attention in a crowded store.

And I gotta say, they work.

I first started collecting plastic bottle caps because they couldn’t be recycled curbside, and they just looked like they ought to be good for something. And those bright dabs of color looked a lot like dots of paint . . . not surprising since modern acrylic paints are, well, plastic.

Next, I dove into plastic bags and food packaging – I had read an article about fusing plastics to make a kind of material, and I was excited to try it! Besides, there had to be something I could do with all of those frozen burrito wrappers my boyfriend was producing . . .

A lot of the fun for me has been figuring out ways to use these materials in a way that really brings out their beauty!

Thanks to a RACC Project Grant and Cheryl over at Create Plenty, I'll be headed into Trillium Charter High School on February 27th to share the beauty (and the dangers) of single-use plastics with two classes of Earth Sciences students.

We're still in the last phases of fundraising for the project, and you can find the plastic quilt pictured above, "Bird on a Wire" for sale here, at the Create Plenty website.

Paperquilts: A Practice of ArtMaking

I've been so busy working on my book the last year that I haven't spent a lot of time in the studio just making. I'm beginning to move back into it - spending time in the mornings and at least one full day a week. Fiddling with materials.


I've been sorting through old collage papers and these are bits and scraps that ended up in the recycling bin, too small for my student collage bins.


I took a tiny paper punch, less than one inch square, and began punching those bits of papers , making hundreds of tiny squares. It felt like going through old clothes and rags, cutting out the bits that might be salvageable for a quilt.



And so I began piecing the bits of paper together . . .


Building a paper quilt. Those little scraps and bits become something more than just recycling, something interesting. I have no idea where this will end up, but I've been keeping the recycling bin nearby.

Summer Reading: At Home with Handmade Books

A month or so ago, I got a surprise in the mail: My very first ever freebie crafty item to review! Yup, this is the disclaimer - this book was sent to me to review, completely unsolicited: At Home with Handmade Books by Erin Zamrzla.

I have quite a few books from the publisher, Shambhala. Titles like Art Heals by Shaun McNiff and Art is a Spiritual Path by Pat B. Allen. But I didn't even know they did full color how-to craft books!


But they do, and there is a similar philosophy expressed. The projects are beautiful, simple, practical and useable. The focus of the book is using recycled and reclaimed materials to make new and functional books. At Home with Handmade Books includes projects that use socks, tea bags, and sponges - and includes books that hold recipes, serve as pincushions, and double as sachets.


I loved this recycle-bin book project - it uses old hardback books and turns them into journals with blank interiors and Japanese-style binding. I love changing up the binding from hardback to hand-stitched!

There's also a whole series of travel books that you can make to feature collected postcards or store road trip souvenirs . . .


This though, is my favorite project . . . it's a book made of ziplock bags that you can use to store collage tidbits! I don't do a lot of bookmaking, but this is one I would absolutely make!


And the instructions are very easy to understand . . . something that's a challenge with complicated and precise projects like bookmaking.

Gallery Walk 2010: 100th Monkey

Back in April, I had a feature show at 100th Monkey Studio's Gallery . . . it included a bunch of my work to date with recycled and reclaimed materials, along with some experiments (including a few that didn't go so well). I felt the piece above was one of the most successful . . . I created a background with tea packets stitched together, then gessoed and painted on the surface. I really like the effect.


So now you're going to get the virtual tour! This piece includes actual teabags along with the tea packaging.


This is an encaustic piece that utilizes tea tags my friend Leslie has been saving for me . . . I have probably hundreds of them and this was my first foray into using them . . .


And here I experimented with drier sheets . . . I printed on them, then stitched them to a canvas surface, along with plastic bottle caps, like buttons.


Here was another experiment - birth control packets and a nest with egg and branch. Home - how we make homes and how we make ourselves feel at home - has long been a theme of mine. Naturally, this intersects a great deal with the role of women and women as homemakers, and the traditional crafts and practices of women and how, as women, we have the option to accept or break out of those roles and redefine them.


And then after all of that deep stuff, we move back to bottle caps. Their plastic wonderfulness and total flexibility and bright colorfulness.



Fused plastic bags as quilt blocks. Another very fun thing. I'm not sure why I enjoy it so much - perhaps just the meditative ironing and arranging and stitching. So, I'm fusing up more plastic bags this week while it's still nice enough to be outside and get good ventilation.


And here's a few more that were in the show.



Now, imagine yourself standing in the gallery . . . considering the pieces, sipping a glass of wine, and deciding which ones appeal to you and why. Or which ones don't appeal to you. The ones that inspire you to try something new, and the ones that make you think. And hey, while you're at it, try heading out to First Friday this week if you're in Portland, or maybe take a gallery break sometime this week wherever you are.

Hello, Green Craft!

Ok - you folks saw it here first, back in 2008, with my series of DEMOs on making jewelry from bicycle inner tubes, and now it's seeing print in Somerset Studios' Green Craft Magazine:

The photographer - and I couldn't find the photo credits - did a wonderful job!



The directions aren't terribly detailed, but the whole magazine is filled with some great inspiration! And in the article, I'm teamed up with Shirley Goff, who creates wonderful handbags from tires, along with a lot of other wonderful recycled adornments!


Check out the magazine and see articles on turning a men's dress shirt into a halter top and making earrings from pop tabs along with a lot of other crafty recycled wonderfulness.

Meltdown, or Working with Reclaimed Materials

I love working with recycled stuff. Right after encaustics, it's my very favorite thing. I have a show up this month at 100th Monkey Studio Gallery - I'm the featured artist in their Recycle Reuse show this month.

Of course, the thing with reclaimed materials is that they are, by their very nature, unpredictable. Take this assemblage I made, for instance. I used a cigar box, an old plastic trophy part, dowels, wire, some old maps, a craft store cardinal - all pretty standard, right? And I used two of my favorite glues to put it together - E6000 (a glue recommended for use with plastics) and Mod Podge.


Now, you may notice something a bit odd. Something that led to the phone call I got yesterday. From the gallery. "Ahem, Bridget, your assemblage is melting." My first thought was that the E6000 and the styrofoam in the middle of the craft store cardinal were not getting along well. But no. The stem of the trophy was collapsing.


Now, this is something every encaustic artist dreads hearing. It's rare for a well-made encaustic piece to melt under normal circumstances, but in direct sunlight in a car window in Arizona while you go have lunch, well, things can happen.

It is, however, a phone call that one doesn't expect to get about an assemblage that doesn't include any wax.

I went over to the gallery today, marked the piece as "Not for Sale", examined the way the E6000 was dissolving the plastic of the trophy into a melty goo, decided I actually like it better with the trophy dipping at an angle, did a quick fix with hot glue, and walked away thinking "Lesson learned."

Then, I remembered that I had found two of those used trophy parts at SCRAP when I bought them years ago, and had used one of those trophy parts in a piece I'd completed back in 2007 or 2008.

A piece for a different show at the SAME GALLERY.

A piece on which I had used the SAME GLUE (E6000) to glue the SAME TROPHY PART to a wooden box. A piece, you will notice, that has remained distinctly UN-MELTED.


Next time, I'll try putting it together with rivets.

Love Letter to Social Media: A Tale of Crafty Inspiration

A while back, I posted a link on Twitter to this awesome tutorial for making little notepads from recycled cardboard from Sister Diane over at CraftyPod. A few weeks later, I ran into my Sweetie's mom and her friend at the bookstore. Sweetie's Mom's Friend (we'll just call her "Donna"*) was giddy with excitement.

Donna had seen the link, gotten inspired, and made a bunch of notebooks! She had one in her purse, and had a whole stack at home ready to give as gifts.

She showed me how she'd used lined paper - she's a writer - to make it easier to jot notes, lists, and ideas.


Donna even used an envelope to add a pocket inside the notebook to hold receipts or business cards or other odd paper bits.

Donna was excited, and I have to admit, I was excited, too! Sister Diane put the tutorial on her blog, and I saw it on my Google reader. I tweeted about it, and that tweet got forwarded to my Facebook. Donna's my friend on Facebook, and she saw the link to Sister Diane's tutorial, and the rest is crafty inspirational history.

And this is the reason I love social media. Because it inspires us and connects us to people and ideas, and ultimately, gets us making things. And I'm happy to be one of many crafty worker bees spreading the creative digital pollen.

*Donna is not her real name. Names have been changed to protect the craft addicted.

Crafty Ideas from Anthropologie: Spring!

I've been doing a lot of tidying around here. Spring cleaning, almost. I finally got my hard drive backed up, and I've spent the better part of two days of washing plastic bottle caps in preparation for some new projects. Thanks to the awesome folks at MacForce, I was also finally able to get a bunch of photos off of my iPhone and into my computer!

So how does this all connect? Some of the pictures were of the latest window display at Anthropologie, and they're very much inspiring some of my new work with reclaimed materials. Anthropologie has wonderful window displays - and they often feature recycled materials. I snapped these just a few weeks ago, and this time around they've used cut up plastic bottles to create Spring-inducing flower arrangements.



Check out the bicycle on display with flowers in the spokes! It looks like the designer may have used pastel or white spray paint to bring out the pastel colors . . .

More fun with Plastic . . .

Once again, I'm throwing myself out there and making more stuff out of reclaimed plastic. I joined up with the latest episode of Leave No Plastic Behind's art challenge, and have been saving large swathes of the plastics I consume . . . plastic bags, plastic bottle caps, bags from frozen foods, straws, lids, clamshells, candy wrappers, tub lids . . . fact is, I produce a lot more plastic than I ever thought I did.

The challenge, of course, is two-fold: one, to make art from the plastics and two, to change your habits so you don't use as much plastic. Let's just say I'm doing really well on the first, and struggling with the second . . .

I found this great tutorial on Etsy for fusing plastic bags. I had plastic bags from my trip to Mexico last year, from frozen veggies, from the Food Day newspaper that gets delivered whether I want it or not . . . So I fused them (with good ventilation, of course) and created squares . . . which I stitched up into this cool quilt square!


Of course, I'm still working with my first love in the world of reclaimed plastics, plastic bottle caps. I made another chandelier, this one for Tribute Gallery in NW Portland:






And, thanks to some friends, I've discovered more artists and creative folks out there making great stuff out of reclaimed plastics . . .


This amazing image of a curtain made of plastic bottlecaps was sent to me by Alea over at Bonewerx - to see more, check out the Dutch wiki the images came from!

And then there's this installation at Rice University by Aurora Robson (photo by Nash Baker) called "The Great Indoors" made entirely of reclaimed plastics . . .those dark curly lines? All bottlecaps!!

Bottle Cap Art Round-Up!

Installations

Last week, my dear friend Leslie pointed me to another Portland, OR artist who's working with plastic bottle caps - and doing installations to boot. His name is Steven Beatty and you should check out his and Laurel Kurtz's installation at PSU - here's the entire Flickr stream.

Of course, it got me thinking about all the other bottle cap coolness that must be out there. A Google search yielded all kinds of coolness!

LIke this guy, Bryant Holsenbeck, who does temporary, mandala-type installations with community help . . . all out of bottle caps and lids.
There's also cool sculptures from Janet Nolan, and Michelle Stitzlein has some great interactive work with kids. Then, there's this clear bottle cap installation planned by Christine Destrempes called "13,699" which, according to her web site, is the number of people who die every day from diseases related to a lack of clean water.

Jewelry

My explorations with bottle caps started out with jewelry making,
like this little skull and tassel pendant . . .

And this blue bead and feather necklace.

So, of course, I did a quick search on Etsy, and
found some other great folks doing bottle cap jewelry:

gjarvisjewelryetc on Etsy has alot of awesome jewelry made from bottlecaps
and old Barbie and doll parts.

StarsDreamsandJewels on Etsy also has some bottle cap pendants with doll parts.

And check out this lovely pin cushion ring made from a recycled bottle cap from BarbaraLousBoutique on Etsy.


With all of these cool ideas, how can you (or I) ever waste another bottlecap?!

DEMO! Plastic Bag Prints

DEMO! Plastic Bag Prints

June is home to Earth Day, and this month is all about crafting with recycled plastic. I've been making art with plastic bottle caps and now it's time for art with the ubiquitous urban tumbleweed, the plastic bag. Find one in a nearby tree? Have a few sitting at home? Don't want to risk the fumes from the fusing process? Why not use them to make prints - the textures make for great backgrounds for journaling, or you can recreate effects like fabric or wood . . .

or they can make great backgrounds for collages . . . like this one that I did using pieces from my various heat moldable foam stamp experiments and touch ups with red acrylic paint.


So, here's how to do it!

1. Start with a basic plastic bag - I like the ones made of thin plastic.
Fold it flat and smooth it out.

2. Now, trim the bottom off so that you have a plastic tube.

3. Cut down one side of the plastic bag, and snip the handles so that
it will lay flat.

4. You want to end up with a large, flat piece of plastic.

5. Now, get a piece of scrap cardboard that is smaller than the piece of plastic.
You're going to want to be able to wrinkle it up over the surface, and
still be able to wrap the plastic around the edges. Now cover the cardboard with glue - I like
Beacon's 3-in-1 glue - it's water based, but it dries water proof. It's a little stinky, but not
too bad, and it adheres to both plastic and cardboard. You're going to want to get a pretty thick coat - the goal is to get lots of textures from the plastic, and the more glue,
the more textures you can get.

6. Use an old credit card or piece of cardboard to spread the glue around
so that you have a more even, but still thick, coat that covers the whole surface.

7. Now, center the plastic over the cardboard and begin
gluing it to the surface.

8. Move the plastic around with your fingers to create textures.
You can make sworls, or imitate wood, or just random wrinkles.

9. Let it dry. The glue is thick and this can take a very long time. Make dinner.
Watch a movie. Go to sleep. Then, wait another day.
It might be dry by now. So, trim the plastic leaving several inches
all the way around. Now, wrap the plastic around the edges and tape them down.

10. Here's what the back looks like.

11. And here's what the front looks like. Ok, it's what the back and the front
of one I did a few weeks ago look like. The process doesn't actually change what
the bag looks like - and I was impatient to do some photos and some prints.

12. Now it's time to print! Get a non-porous surface, a soft rubber brayer,
and some water based printing ink. Squeeze some ink onto the rolling
surface, roll it out with the brayer, and . . .

12. Roll the ink onto the plastic!

13. Lay some paper over the inked plastic, and press evenly.

14. You've got a really cool print! You can clean the printing plate off with a damp
sponge and use it over and over again, combining it with prints from other plates, and building up lots of texture and color.