You'll Never Guess What This Bracelet is Made From! This eye-catching bracelet is sure to surprise you. It's made from wood, metal and glass beads - a really striking combination. But there's something a bit out of the ordinary about this bracelet. Those long red wooden beads are rather interesting. And you're probably thinking that you've seen them somewhere before but can't quite put your finger on what it is that's so familiar about them. Have you worked it out yet? No? Well, keep scrolling down the page.... and I'm sure you'll recognise them straight away.  Did you guess? The wooden beads are actually from a bamboo placemat that you can find at your local kitchenware or dollar store. What an ingenious upcycle! If you'd like to make a placemat bracelet of your own, here's what you'll need: Bamboo placemat Eight 14mm silver donut beads (with 7mm internal diameter) Eight 6mm 'Jet' Black bicone crystals Eight 10mm black diagonall......

In a throw away world we produce a mountain of landfill so it's good when you find a way to re-purpose the fancy packaging that often comes with our purchases. Today's project takes a Lindt Maxi Ball and upcycles it into an adorable woodland terrarium. In case you don't know what a Lindt Maxi Ball is, it's a large clear plastic ball filled with delicious Lindt chocolates and you usually find them around Christmas and Easter when they're packaged up like a giant bonbon. So, how do you go about turning one into a terrarium? Well, here's what you'll need to make this cute woodland themed terrarium: Lindt Chocolate Maxi Ball   Coloured gravel in your choice of colour Horticultural Charcoal  - choose fine rather than coarse (this keeps the soil smelling sweet which is important as there are no drainage holes) Potting Mix Small piece of fly screen Selection of small plants (all with the same growing/moisture requirements). Mine are all ferns and come in 5cm (2......

Today is a good mail day! Freshly delivered from Estonia is this brilliant Pavel Sidorenko Re_Vinyl record clock. I love all his designs so much that I pinned one to my Pinterest board but it was the New York clock that I fell in love with. My husband and I have been lucky enough to travel to NY on a couple of our US trips and it's one of our favourite cities.  He has two walls of his office dedicated to NY which remind us of all the wonderful things we have done on those visits. This will be a great addition to his collection. You can pick out lots of landmark buildings from the New York skyline and yes, that is King Kong swinging from the top of the Empire State Building! You've just got to check out Pavel's range of clocks - he has designs for many major cities around the world. And yes, for all my Aussie readers, there is one for Sydney! Now I've just got to hide this away for a few months until our Anniversary! 'Til next time..... If you can't get enough ......

So, now I have a small handful of handmade paper beads . What to do with them next? When you roll your paper beads from magazines and junk mail you really don't know how they'll look until you've rolled them. After all, the only bits that show are the very edges and they are often multi coloured but with a fair bit of black patterning. So what do you do when you don't like the colour of some of the beads? Why, you recolour them of course! I've decided to colour them up with some Sephora nail polish . This will do two things: it will brighten them up but it wall also seal them and make them durable for use in jewellery making. About the only time I get to use nail polish is when I'm on vacation. Most of the time, my hands take a fair bit of punishment because they are always in some sort of arty stuff which will either chip the nail polish, partially remove it or generally make it look untidy. So when I buy a new nail colour, it gets used for a couple of weeks an......

A few weeks back I stumbled upon a blog post that brought back some wonderful childhood memories for me. Check out this fabulous upcycling idea over at Something Created Everyday and then read on to find out what it reminded me of. When my mother was growing up, she listened to the crooners of her generation on old 78s. She had quite a large record collection but by the 70s she'd moved on to Pop music. So what to do with all those old records? She couldn't bare to part with them; she had grown up in the depression where you didn't throw anything away. So she came up with a unique way of recycling them - not into tiered cake platters but into bowls for nibblies. Let me share her idea with you. Firstly, you'll need an old record. I couldn't find any old 78s but I picked up a couple of LPs for 50 cents at Vinnies. Heat the oven to 165°-170°C (330°F) and place a sheet of silicone baking paper on a flat tray. I used Glad Bake just to make sure it didn't stick to......