Eco Friendly Home Projects

Dear readers, this blog will no longer be updated.  All contents will be moved to: upcycleliving.blogspot.com Please update your link, and we hope to see you again soon  😊 Connect all the tinsels together to make a really long one This time I first wrap up the tripod with some red net fabric we saved from a gift hamper. This way the tinsel holds better in place when twirled around the frame. And the angel lights are placed first so that the wire is not visible over the tree. Start the long tinsel on the top with a knot then twirl it around the tripod until it's all covered up. Tie the end to one of the tripod legs to secure it.

Dear readers, this blog will no longer be updated.  All contents will be moved to: upcycleliving.blogspot.com Please update your link, and we hope to see you again soon  😊 Our old Christmas wreath made from old mince pie boxes has way passed its sell-by date, so it's time to have a new one made. This new one can't be easier; I found an old wire in the tool box (probably taken out from an old hanger) and bent it into a circle, with both ends twisted into small loop then tied with a bendable twist tie wire. I then twirled the silver tinsel (found in the box with old Christmas decoration) around the wire, secured by twisting the ends together. Finally slapped on a decorative bell and ribbon - again, from the Christmas decor box. Not a single penny was spent. Not even an inch of cello tape. Welcome to the first day of Advent!

Dear readers, this blog will no longer be updated.  All contents will be moved to: upcycleliving.blogspot.com Please update your link, and we hope to see you again soon  😊 Angel lights are placed inside of the tree for a softer feel The bad news is, our tripod was broken (the top bit - heaven knows when and how that happened). The good news is, I can now use it for something else with no guilt (especially to all the photography enthusiasts out there) - as a base for our 2015 DIY Christmas tree! DIY Christmas tree from a broken tripod and some Christmas tinsel This has got to be the easiest-to-assemble Christmas tree to date. All I did was set the tripod up to the height I want, then tie the strips of Christmas tinsel around it. Everything can be packed away easily and reused for next Christmas. The wired ribbon has been used a few times on the 2012 Christmas tree on the wall , the 2010 CD Christmas tree , and our very first DIY Christmas tree in 2008 ...

Dear readers, this blog will no longer be updated.  All contents will be moved to: upcycleliving.blogspot.com Please update your link, and we hope to see you again soon  😊 When I made the Mini Cardboard Tabletop Christmas Tree , I thought I was going to settle for just that. After all, we are packing up for the move; it's going to be a sad little Christmas. And as I was taking down all the 3M hooks here and there to leave the landlord a clean wall, these little 3M wonders gave me an idea. Well you see, I've bought stashed away quite a bit of the replacement 3M stickers for more than a year now; and they don't work well after hibernating in a shoebox, in a damp house in a humid country for that long. Now they will have the opportunity to shine (literally) before they announce retirement. So all together, 8 used and reused 3M wire hooks, 8 not-working-so-well 3M removable stickers, 1 good old reliable Christmas wired ribbon, angel lights from 2010 Christmas ...

Dear readers, this blog will no longer be updated.  All contents will be moved to: upcycleliving.blogspot.com Please update your link, and we hope to see you again soon  😊 This Christmas is going to be a quiet one for us as we are in the midst of moving, so a big(ish) tree like previous years is just impractical. But not having a tree at all would make it even sadder. And the solution is: a tiny, mini, tabletop cardboard Christmas tree!    The making is pretty simple: View larger image in new tab or window 1. Material: some patterned or printed cardboard (old Christmas cards, Christmas merchandise packaging, etc), I cut these from last year's Christmas crackers packaging box. 2. Cut them into equal sizes: 2 per tree. 3. Take 2 and stick them together, back to back using double sided tape. 4. Make sure they are adhered nicely together, trim away any jutting out edges. 5. Cut each piece into 2 equal pieces. 6&7. Using a pen...

Dear readers, this blog will no longer be updated.  All contents will be moved to: upcycleliving.blogspot.com Please update your link, and we hope to see you again soon  😊 A friend of mine is volunteering at The Heavenly Gift for Community at Heart , a non-profit organisation, to help raise funds for underprivileged children in Malaysia to grant their little Christmas wishes. The event is held at Tropicana City Mall which is in my area, so I went personally for a little donation and to see if there's anything I can help (keep them accompanied and look helpful as I'm really not a very good salesperson lol). They have a free gift wrapping service counter next to the donation table so I thought I could at least help doing some gift wrapping. Then we realised that people aren't really aware of the free service because there isn't any signage apart from one bunting standee. So I offered to make them some signboards. This one here is for the bo...

Dear readers, this blog will no longer be updated.  All contents will be moved to: upcycleliving.blogspot.com Please update your link, and we hope to see you again soon  😊 Open in new tab or window to view larger image. Angel with smiley face drawn on cut out cardboard It is small - under 6', and made out of used egg crates held up by rustic wood! Hanging on the tree are little angels with wings made from fan-fold recycled paper (old magazine pages, used wrapping paper, etc) and halos made from twist tie wires (probably from bread packaging), and smiley faces drawn on cut out cardboard! It is not grand like most of the big shopping malls in Kuala Lumpur or Petaling Jaya, but it doesn't look pathetic like many either. And I think that the artists have put great effort in the thinking process and execution to keep consumption to the minimum and still came up with something this lovey. Whoever did this, well done!

Dear readers, this blog will no longer be updated.  All contents will be moved to: upcycleliving.blogspot.com Please update your link, and we hope to see you again soon  😊 It's that time of the year again - you're right - time to get busy preparing for Christmas! And what can be more fun than getting the tree up? As usual, the rules here is to have nothing (or very little) bought. Everything must be old, used, or recycled. We had a great success last year with our CD Christmas tree , and the CDs were then stored away for their future use in God-knows-what; maybe rebuild the same tree, who knows? But this year we're going to be away for the holiday so we'll just have something really simple and doesn't require much work. As I was going through my craft boxes, I found this stack of beautiful glossy cardboard that used to be the body of some Christmas crackers we used last year (yes I actually saved those bits). Was initially thinking of making some p...

Bought a pair of oven gloves last year, which can't withstand a single wash - the inside was some sort of fluff that started coming off. So lesson learnt: must only get oven gloves that are fully fabric made. Anyways, being the hogger that I am, throwing away a rather new pair of (non-functioning) oven gloves still bothers me. So I've turned them into a pair of mini Christmas stockings, as they are red and green and look Christmasy. The magic wand I used here is a 1.5-inch needle and some magical red threads :-) Here are the oven gloves-turned-Christmas stockings: Here is what they looked like before: Being taken apart for cutting: Nothing's wasted!

Before I learned how to make mince pies, we used to buy them from the shops, and have kept the packaging boxes which I knew will come in handy one day. The red colour and the festive patterned borders on the box can be used for making any Christmas decor. So we thought we'd make a Christmas wreath out of them. I cut the boxes into short 4-5-cm strips and stick them in a random crisscross pattern to make a circle, with cellophane tapes. I've also used some left over old sequins (taken off from an old bag), an old red ribbon, and a "Happy Christmas" wording cut out from an old Christmas card. Easy peasy.

All these preparation for Christmas just reminded me of the very first handmade Christmas tree I made back in 1988, when I was still a college student living with 6 other college mates in a rented property. I was staying in the house all by myself as all my friends have gone home for the holiday and I really wanted to have a tree so I decided to make one (that was all that I could afford to do). I made mine out of some used mounting boards but you can try with any big cardboard box. Unfortunately there isn't any photograph taken (there was no digital camera so we had to really be careful not to waste our films on non assignment related stuff) but I've drawn some diagrams to show the process. 1. Cut the board into 4 equal shapes like this: 2. Mark 3 places where you will put support in for the tree (x, y, z points shown below), measure the width and cut 3 circles with radius the same as x, y, and z respectively. Cut a 2mm thick slot into the boards as shown below: Do not cut the...

2 years ago I made my own Christmas tree out of used A4 and A3 paper, but it can't be reused as it was glued to a fixed shape. So last year I made a 2-D foldable one from old cardboard box so that I can store it in my Christmas box for future use. However, when I dug it out a few days ago, the edges were rather bent due to the space constraint and the extreme humidity here in the tropics. It's still usable, I guess. But then the stack of old CDs on my shelf caught my eyes and gave me an idea: perhaps I could do something with them and make a Christmas tree that can be reassembled completely. How to make a Christmas tree out of old CDs? I started drawing out plans and decided that a 3-sided pyramid-like tree is possible. But I may need more CDs than what I already have so I asked for help on FreeCycle KL Yahoo Group . Within days I managed to get more CDs contributed by some of the kind members. (Big thanks to them!) And after a few trials and errors, my transparent, 100...

Greeting cards are one of the biggest consumerism scams to get people to keep spending and "saving" time on writing sincere messages to their friends and family. Yes the cards can be so pretty that you can easily be tempted into buying some and send it to someone. But the clutter it creates is beyond imagination. I don't encourage anyone to send me cards, nor do I buy any greeting cards to give to anyone. But, as and when I can, I will try to make some cards using used and/or old material (not the type you make from ready-made trimmings and decoration/stickers you buy from the shops). I have just made 8 Christmas cards (one of them already sealed in the envelope) to send to our family and friends - exactly 8 families. They are all made according to whatever I can find in my craft box: old felt I collected from God-knows-where, pretty pictures cut out from old magazines, old greeting cards, old mince pies boxes, tissue wrapping paper saved from packaging, sequins fr...

My nieces, like all other young girls, love everything about princess. Last Christmas, I made them tiara party hats out of old Christmas cards and sequins I took off a free handbag (which I've turned into a multi-compartment handbag ). Since I have some leftover beads which are not enough for anything extensive, I thought I could make them some beaded tiaras. I've used only fishing lines as I haven't any steel wire, and buying some just for that is going to defeat the purpose of using up existing material. Fishing lines are soft and flexible so they can't be worn like commercial tiaras. However, they turned out to be dual-purpose: 1. to be worn as a headband, and 2. as a necklace. Perhaps I can make up stories about some fairy princesses whose tiaras can turn into magical necklaces that give them power, and I think the girls would like that.

Since the last bunch of beaded napkin rings , I've gone a little obsessed with napkin rings and have made another set with different coloured beads and design. I managed to make 5 with the leftover beads from making my choker necklace and a beaded belt. I think they look really good with my mostly white table setting and crockeries. Unlike the turquoise napkin rings , these ones have a slightly more complicated design so it took me almost 2 evenings to complete. Here is the step-by-step process in illustration: 1. I use a 0.35 nylon fishing thread (that's what I have in my drawer), but you can use a thinner one as the napkin rings are only small. I measure it to about 1.1m for each napkin ring. It's always best to use 1 whole thread for each, to save rejoining work halfway through. Start with the beads in the middle of the thread and criss-cross to make shapes: 2. Here's to complete the first circle and move on to the next row (then repeat for the row after that): 3. T...