I know a lot of people who are avid sewers, origamists, potters, artists and crafters, and I thought I'd drop a few ideas here for things you can make that provide substitutes for bought products, and recycle household bits.


How to: Make Tiny Paper Pots
tiny seedling pots made from magazines
Larger pots can be used for storage

There's a great how to at For Greenies Blog on folding newspaper origami pots.  I tried it with the thick page of a Frankie Magazine - I had a few lying around and have been cutting bits out for other projects. I found if I skipped For Greenies' Step 4 (a half fold) I could make little pointy bottomed pots. These would be great for digging straight into the garden to give seedlings a bit of protection or making into a hanging advent calendar with a sweetie in each one. The original square bottomed paper pot made from newspaper on For Greenies is great for larger seedling plantings, and can also be used to organise drawers instead of plastic dividers (when they get manky and covered in makeup as everything in my bathroom drawers does, they can be thrown out and remade). They're terribly easy to make as long as you're not a complete noob at origami.

How to: Make Awesome Cards for Lovely Friends
Got some magazines lying around at home? I sure do, and once I've read them they're just taking up space on a shelf. This year instead of buying christmas cards, I used some old pages of a drawing pad, and some admittedly bought cardboard, and went crazy with the cutting and glueing. Here's what came out of it!
If you have access to a local bookstore, you can ask them to save you the packing cardboard that is sometimes used to separate books in their boxes and is often good quality and just goes into the recycling. Be super nice when you ask and you might make some bookshop friends! Recycled paper would work beautifully with this too, especially if it's printed on one side - just glue an image over your printed page and it'll look all artsy fartsy without you even trying! Whizzing up old used paper in a blender, pulping it and drying it makes pretty awesome, textured paper which would look great as cards too. Here's a video tutorial of how to make your own paper.

How to: Make Green Giftwrap

And finally, the giftwrap - you can make your own from newspaper printed with potato stamps. Or you can use fabric and do it the Japanese way! This vid shows how: Furoshiki Japanese Wrapping
The Furoshiki way is best for people who love to sew so they can make something from the piece of wrapping fabric, and of course, it's a lot more green if you are using fabric you've picked up from a second hand store or a garage sale, instead of buying it new. I made the 'bag' from the vid today to put a friend's birthday present in, and it looks marvellous. If i'd had time I'd have hemmed the edges of the fabric and it would have been a legitimate bag! As it is it's probably very useful for farmers markets etc.

I have a  lot of fabric stored in my garage from various places - op shops, my grandma's old pieces, bags of scraps given me by friends, so if I have time before Christmas, I'll whip up some quick flip bags to put gifts in. They're the exact shape of an envelope made from a square of fabric with not too much fuss on the edging. They can be fixed with a button or velcro. They're great for putting books in throughout the year so they don't get dog-earred and then can be regifted at Christmas or birthdays... I'll put up photos if I get around to making some.