Perhaps you will understand the idea of upcycle crafting if I tell you that I watch The Repair Shop, Salvage Hunters, The Restorers, Money for Nothing and a host of other shows that take old, sometimes useless, sometimes broken, often discarded items and turn them into something that someone wants.
It’s not just about fun, it’s about responding to our profligate waste of our world’s resources. The throwaway culture has to end. This does not mean things have to be ugly, and I hope that we can shake the idea that something mended is somehow less beautiful or valuable. You can still “have nothing in your home that is not beautiful or useful”.
Over time, humans have invested so much of our world’s limited resources into making things that we now reject, that we need to think again about how this is going to end. It’s almost as if we all believe that new resources will magically appear from the another dimension!
When I worked in Africa, I was always moved by the imaginative use of resources I saw there every day: broken flipflops washed up on the beach made into flyscreens; tyres turned into shoes; tin cans into toys. The concept of upcycle crafting is not new.
I get such a buzz when inspiration hits that I’m keen to share the “how to” hints that make it possible for others to do the same. I enjoy the making, but also encouraging others to do the same.
Join me in my adventures around the scrap heap…