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I have two New Year’s Resolutions:
1. Be a better vegetarian by eating fortified foods and making sure that I am eating a well-rounded diet. I became a vegetarian first and foremost for health reasons, so why would I continue to eat PB&J sandwiches and spinach salads all the time? It’s time to re-diversify my diet and bring back the scrambled tofu and nutritional yeast.
2. Switch all of my household items to environmentally friendly types. I took the plunge months ago into all natural beauty products- deodorant without aluminum, chlorine-free tampons, natural soap, etc. I’ve also been using recycled paper towels, natural laundry detergent, and citrus dish soap for a while. However, there are more things that I can switch to in my house. I am going to make my own products from vinegar and baking soda because that sounds fun. I found this website of household recipes.
I’m trying my hardest to get some things together for the CCM Art Show. It was supposed to open at the beginning of February, but the open date has been moved to this Friday. I had big plans for this show, but with the earlier open date, I decided to not buy any materials for my pieces. Why frantically buy new materials with so little time? Thus, I did a thorough alley search through the dumpsters and trash cans in the three block radius around my house. I scored some great materials. People throw away bizarre things.
Tyvek is the brand name for a patented plastic made by the evil Dupont chemical corporation. Most people are familiar with Tyvek home wrap or envelopes.
I recently had something mailed to me in a priority mail Tyvek envelope. On the one hand, I hate Tyvek because it has the qualities of paper, but can not be recycled. The only way to recycle it is to mail it back to Dupont. When it is difficult to recycle things, people are less likely to recycle them. That’s really the problem I have with Tyvek. On the other hand, I love Tyvek because it is durable and waterproof material that can be sewn and written on easily. I experimented last night with sewing the Tyvek envelope into a small handbag. The nylon thread I used for the recycled messenger bag worked very well. Next, I’m going to make a rubber stamp to stamp a pattern onto Tyvek. Etsy has a tutorial on how to make stamps from linoleum blocks.
I used Nylon Upholstery thread; it worked beautifully.
Here are some photos of the first messenger bag I made from shopping bags. I’m not that great at integrating flickr and wordpress, so there is some computer code gobly-gook on the posts. Just ignore that. Click on the photos to see the whole set in Flickr. Enjoy.
