Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Reusing Tea Tins


I hate to throw away those nice little round tea tins, but haven't found them very useful for holding anything else since I can't ever tell what's inside... I finally figured out that you can just wrap them quickly in brown paper and then write what's inside and the date. Then when that stuff runs out, I can cross out the old writing and write something new. In this way I can use the same brown paper for years! Alternately you could use pretty paper to wrap them (wrapping paper, newspaper, art store paper...).

To do it quickly, I just rolled the tin along the edge of the paper and drew a little dot where I wanted to cut the paper. Then I used the book as a straight edge and connected the dots. I cut the paper and then used that as a template to cut a few more sheets. I used Scotch tape to attach.

Sunday, September 9, 2007

Pear Tree Lamp.



Nick Foley created this amazing lamp. Each bulb is composed of LEDS, an autonomous charging ciruit and a rare earth magnet so that you can pick a 'pear' off the 'tree', and it will remain illuminated for up to an hour!

I'm not even much of a home-furnishings kind of person, (Arwen and Andrea hold down that fort!) but it is just such a delicious (erm, sorry) mix of technology and art and fantasy. If only things manufactured in the world were as (and more!) beautiful, useful, and environmentally of low impact, I would be very pleased. Sometimes I really do think that aesthetics are the way to go, for better or worse, in terms of getting people to make more sustainable choices...

Thanks to Phil at the makezine blog for pointing it out!