Upcycle Auction

Just wanted to let everyone know that all the items that are in Folksy's Upcycle Competition have now been listed on eBay, ready and waiting to be bid on! Get your fingers over to the Folksy blog for more information about the competition winners, or hop on over to the eBay shop that the Folksy team have set up.

And that reminds me - I haven't got around to showing you guys a picture of the last item I made for the competition. After knitting countless metres of icord, I then looped the resulting rope around several times, and attached it at one point with a small piece of fabric knitted in the same material. The yarn came from this baggy batwing jumper that I'd picked up from Sue Ryder Camden. Voila! A long, loopy scarf...made with 100% cotton.

Upcycle Update

As I mentioned a few weeks back, I'm taking part in Folksy's Upcycle Christmas Challenge. The last few weeks have mainly been spent tearing clothes apart so I could reuse the material, but I've managed to make a couple of items so far.

I've pretty much completely given in to my current yo-yo obsession and based almost all the designs in the competition on yo-yos. The first one is a little brooch, with the base part made from the WAG-ish lilac Karen Millen jacket (I'm not even sure why that jacket makes me think of WAGs, it just does. Could be the colour reminds me of their talon-like acrylic nails?). There's also a little hair-clip made from the giant old man's pyjama set for now.

Besides those two little items, I'm also working on a couple of statement necklaces type items, with yo-yos strung together, and probably held up by ribbons or lace. This one down here's a preview, but I've got another one in the works. And I'm also working on a stupidly long icord loop scarf thingo, I don't even know if that's going to turn out in the way I think it will, but I hope so.

 

You can have a look at the other items in the competition over here, and if you like anything, make sure you vote for it during the auction in December! All the proceeds will go to Sue Ryder Care.

Jump Around!

Folksy is organising an 'Upcycle Christmas Competition' this year to raise money for the Sue Ryder Care charity, and I'll be taking part in it. The deal is this - you enter, print up a ticket and go to a participating Sue Ryder store to pick up 5 items to upcycle, which you then auction on Folksy, with the proceeds going to Sue Ryder Care. I thought this was an awesome idea, since I get a large portion of my materials from op-shops anyway, and it fits it almost perfectly with the cut-and-paste way I usually work.

So last Saturday, I printed up my ticket and went to the Sue Ryder store in Camden to pick up 5 items to tear apart for charity. It turned out to be slim pickings, as I only had 2 bags of stuff to choose from, but I did manage to dig through and get my mitts on 5 items in the end.

I found this brand new, fairly see-through (though it doesn't appear so in the photo) white cotton mesh tank top and gross, shiny lavender brocade blazer jacket after sifting through some of the other items in the bag. I'm not quite sure what I'll do with them yet, but rest assured that I'll be ripping that disgusting jacket apart. And as you can see from the photos, I graduated with honours from the Kate Bush School of Dance.

More digging, and I was rewarded with this white, knitted, batwinged top with lacey panels. Not completely hideous, now that I look at it again, but I think I'll be unraveling it so I can use the yarn to make up something - maybe a cape? And yes, I am wearing trackies in this photo - please don't judge me, it was before breakfast.

And lastly, I picked up this gigantic stripey men's pyjama set to complete my 5 items. The Mancreature is convinced some old guy died in this. Urgghh! I picked it mainly because it was so large, which meant that I would have loads of material to sew things from.

You can't really see it, but the trousers were ENORMOUS, which resulted in a lot of awkward tucking and folding after I put them on.

I can't wait to start cutting these things up and making pretty little things out of them. (After all, there's been some shocking atrocities committed in the name of charity recently, and it's about time to put things right.) If you're interested in bidding on items in the auction, or you want to take part in the competition, then get thee over to the Folksy site. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Folksy, it's pretty much like Etsy, but with a focus on UK sellers. I'll be posting updates as I finish making stuff.

Rhonda's Recycled Craft Challenge

Etsy seller junkstop is holding the first ever 'Rhonda's Recycled Craft Challenge' and I'll be taking part in it.

It sounds pretty interesting - you register by purchasing a challenge packet from her Etsy shop, she mails out the packages on June 2nd, you get it, make something, put it up in the Flickr group that she's set up, and twiddle your thumbs till she announces a winner on July 31st! If you win (ahem, I mean, when I win), you'll get a US$20 voucher to her shop.

It's only US$0.20 to enter, and you get a to make a bunch of items from stuff that would otherwise have gone into landfill. And if you win, you get to buy stuff like this from her shop:
and also these:
Have a look at her blog for more details and crafty ideas.