Thursday, July 23, 2009
It was fun scouring the thrift store for cool plates in different colors. If using someone else’s plates bothers you, scrub them down and then wash them in the dish washer. Mine has a sterilize setting.
Monday, July 20, 2009
These vegan cupcakes are from Cakewalk Baking Company and the organic lollipops are from Yummy Earth.
How are vegan and organic foods eco-friendly? Oh, just let me tell you. I won’t get up too high on my soapbox, because really we’re talking about sweet little cupcakes here. But I don’t think a few facts will hurt anyone.
First vegan. Farmed animals consume 70 percent of the corn, wheat, and other grains that we grow, and one-third of all the raw materials and fossil fuels used in the U.S. go to raising animals for food. And more than half of the water used in the United States today goes to animal agriculture, and since farmed animals produce 130 times more excrement than the human population, the run-off from their waste is fouling our waterways. There is a lot more, but I’ll leave it at that. You can go here to read the rest of the article. This doesn’t mean that you have to give up all animal products, just using less will help.
Okay, organic. Organic farming requires more people-power. Weeding by hand and using green manures and crop covers rather than synthetic fertilizers to build up soil are the foundations of Organic agriculture. Whereas, conventional farming uses more petroleum than any other single industry, consuming 12 percent of the country’s total energy supply. Did you know that most commercial fertilizers come from petroleum? More energy is used to produce synthetic fertilizers than to till, cultivate, and harvest all the crops in the US. Of course there’s more and you can read the rest of the article here. But let me assure you that although these cupcakes were better for the environment, they also tasted so good.
There are lots more artsy posts from the Eco-Friendly Artist Party. Click on the tag below to see them.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
I bought these upcycled notebooks from Vintage Paper Works on Etsy. They matched the color scheme of the party perfectly–what a great find! Etsy has such a great selection of upcycled notebooks and other upcycled items. Don’t know what upcycling is? It’s the act of creating useful products from waste materials or in other words taking something that is disposable and transforming it into something of greater use and value. For example, these monopoly cards. Perhaps this game was missing pieces and was no longer in use. Instead of throwing the whole thing out, Judy decided to make these property cards into tiny notebooks, giving them a new life. Brilliant!
There are lots more artsy posts from the Eco-Friendly Artist Party. Click on the tag below to see them.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Don’t want to have a messy painting party at your house? Check out your local community center for great rooms to rent. This one was only $20 per hour, plus a refundable cleaning deposit. Community centers also often have other rooms, like: meeting rooms, pools, and gymnasiums.
There are lots more artsy posts from the Eco-Friendly Artist Party. Click on the tag below to see them.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
directions:
1. You will need: letter molds (I got mine from Silly Cone), old crayons with the wrappers peeled off, a baking sheet.
2. Break the crayons into small pieces and fit them into the letter mold. Use more crayons than you think, they melt down.
3. With the molds on the baking sheet, put them into a 350ยบ preheated oven for 15 minutes. After the crayons are melted take them out of the oven and let them sit for a minute. Put the molds into the freezer for 15-30 minutes so the crayon letters will harden faster.
4. When the letters are hardened, pop them out carefully. This isn’t as easy as it looks (sometimes the letters break). If a letter breaks you can just remelt that letter in the mold in the oven, refreeze, and try popping it out again.
5. There you go.
6. Bag them up, tie with a cute ribbon, and add an upcycled notebook.
I made 13 sets of these letter alphabets (338 individual letters) for the party. This is a picture of them all layed out on my carpet so that I could see what letters were missing, because like I said, sometimes they break.
There are lots more artsy posts from the Eco-Friendly Artist Party. Click on the tag below to see them.
Monday, July 13, 2009
There are so many options now when it comes to invitations. In a perfect world we might be able to go paperless here, but kids don’t always understand that. And, hello, my mom can’t turn on a computer so she has to be mailed an invite anyway. That’s why I’m always looking for better alternatives, like invitations printed on recycled paper. This paper is from Green Field Paper Company and it’s called 100% junk mail. The coolest part is that it’s tree free and made from 100% recycled fibers mixed with the junk mail collected by their employees. Love it!
There are lots more artsy posts from the Eco-Friendly Artist Party. Click on the tag below to see them.
