Craftiness for pretty much nothing

I ran across a phrase on a craft blog yesterday that made me chuckle.  It said the item could be made "with things crafters usually have on hand."  It's true, we tend to keep things like hot glue guns, buttons, bottle caps, fabric scraps, and zippers much more often than people who would rather buy things than make them.

In the vein of making do, many of us honestly do find creating an item much more fulfilling than purchasing the same item.  We love having a say in tailoring our possessions to the needs they are designed to meet, rather than having to re-arrange to accommodate an item that was too small or large for the space it needed to fill.  And better yet, we love having done it all with things we had on hand already--things that were given to us or that somehow found their way into our homes.

Thus my last two crafted items have come into being.  The first was from Stash Tea catalogs and packing tape, the second from fabric that was bequeathed to me from someone that had no use for it.  My friend and colleague Dr. Lape called them "sustainable crafting," and I suppose they are--it is very easy to be sustainable when you look at what you have to work with and use it well.  Whether or not you do so because you have no money to throw at things, or for the love of it, or both, is up to you.

Meet the tea bag.  This bag is adorable, despite what my horribly lit bedroom might tell you.  My idea use for it would be to take it out into a kitchen garden, gather herbs, and set them gently into it.  I even added an inner pocket for scissors or a knife to cut the herbs or vegetables, so the sharp places won't damage the cuttings.  Because of the packing tape I used to hold the parts together, it has a vinyl crackle and feel, but the patterns, images, and descriptions visible on it are all from a tea catalog.  Very chic, very fresh.

This is the rug.  I took at least 6 yards of a garden-themed print fabric and tore it into approximately 4-inch strips.  I sewed the strips together to make a giant "yarn" of sorts and crocheted the rug with a chopstick.  The entire project took me the better part of 3 hours, and I'm already contemplating shredding more fabric and making the rug big enough to fill a room.  It is incredibly soft, as the knots of the crocheting put over an inch of cushion between your tired feet and the hard floor.  This rug is also chic and summery, which is tending to be a theme now that it is cold and blustery outdoors.

So...the challenge for the week is this: use ONLY things you have on hand to create something new and beautiful.  Bonus: The thing you create must fulfill a purpose in your home.

Ready, set, MAKE SOME AMAZING!