gardening :: thrifty and nifty

What a nifty idea! And a great gift I think for the gardener in your life OR for your own garden!

I wish I had a patch of garden that I could "plant" these in but my yard is shaded by big maple trees. :(

But fret not, these markers are great for pot gardens as well as indoor house plants too. The Etsy shop called Monkeys Always Look makes these wonderful aged markers from neglected old silver plate flatware, turning it into something new and useful. Repurpose, reuse. LOVE THAT! These are JUST COOL!

DIY :: recycled bugs

Well aren't these DIY guys JUST COOL! These dragonflies are made from around the house junk - wire, old christmas tree bulbs and metal washers. Just solder them together and you have this neat bug...

Or have Don Hutchings do it for you. "Glass Christmas Light bulb made in to a dragonfly bug using old and found items and old wire welded to make this great little bug 3 x 4 inches and has a hook for hanging Many colors to pick from just ask Don Hutchings FREE SHIPPING TO SEE COLORS GO TO blackcrowforge.com!" Check out Don Hutching's Black Crow Forge in his etsy shop too!

Sure, bugs can be JUST COOL!

via recyclart

green :: salad siding

What a great idea! Recycling rain gutters into mini veggie gardens. Who'da thunk that skinny scrawny rain gutters could actually grow vegetables but YES THEY CAN! And they even look good doing it.

via new world geek

recycling :: heartburn hill

Coke can recycling went to the extreme when 200,000 crushed cans were arranged to recreate a 1949 Coca-Cola billboard ad. Now that's a heck of a lot of heartburn!

The creative endeavor kicked off the start of recycle week in the UK and was a 50 meter long work of art created by Robert Bradford and his team of artists, taking a week in all to complete.Now that's JUST COOL!

via creative review

green :: wasted waste bin

How about a waste basket made of waste? Recycled paper (that once was waste) ,that is . This cool waste basket is made of fifty recycled paper liners that stack inside of each other. Designers Riccardo Nannini, Domenico Orefice and Emanuele Pizzolorusso exhibited their waste paper basket made of recycled paper at exhibition Dismettiamola! in Milan this week.

When the bin is full , the filled top liner is thrown away (into another recycle bin ;) ) and the next layer is ready to collect more waste paper. The pleated cupcake liner shape can be produced easily and it looks JUST COOL too!

via Dezeen

furniture :: what a wreck!

Joel Hester turns junk into funk. Like this ...

into this

Hi cool industrial furniture is welded from salvaged auto body parts, then clear-coated to preserve the oxidation and rust.

He also creates bed frames, desks and armoires from the old parts but I think these tables are the jewels of his collection. They're JUST COOL!

via renest

art :: bottle cap portraits

Take a closer look. These super sized portraits are unusual in that they are made entirely of bottlecaps!

Molly B. Right's bottle cap series began with portraits of Jesus and his mother Mary but soon expanded to include a host of iconic women who evoke an ethereal presence and an earthy grit. In the artist's statement Molly writes, "This series of bottle cap pieces evolved from musings about the phrase “Jesus Saves”. Saves what? Does he just save souls? If he had the time or inclination, would he save string? Rubber bands? Would Jesus save bottle caps? Yeah. Somehow that became a full size bottle cap portrait of Jesus. Funny how one notion morphs into another. Now I’m doing bottle cap portraits of archetypal women that don’t have anything to do with Jesus saving anything. Now I’m the one who is saving bottle caps." Bottle cap paintings - their unusual and JUST COOL!

fashion :: fasten your seatbelt bags

WORN AGAIN VIRGIN is a line of travel and hand bags made from old seat belts, seat covers, and bicycle tubes. Stylish, too - in fact you'd never know that they were made from these recycled materials if I hadn't told you! Worn again is in cahoots with Virgin Atlantic Airlines to help them in their goal to halve the waste they send to landfill by 50% by 2012. A total of 2000 limited edition bags have been produced with Virgin Atlantic materials from approximately 1000 seats.

So check out these uncommon bags...they're JUST COOL!

cool product :: package lamp by David Gardner

Wait, don't throw away that package. Thats the lamp!

If you order a lamp from David Gardener, what you get is an empty box. Well not exactly empty. It does have packaging in it - hand molded paper pulp packaging. But the packaging is actually the lamp itself!

Once opened, your "packaging" components are removed and assembled and the packaging becomes the shade and stand. The components that make up the lamp (wire, bulbs etc.) dictate the lamps shape, so as to fit them conveniently into the base during transit.

“The Packaging lamp was first inspired from my observations of how much packaging material is wasted from every new product bought,” explains Gardener. “The idea is to eliminate this waste material by including it all in the final product.”

Gardener, a University of Brighton graduate, presented the design at New Designers in London last month.

Lovin' the handmade paper look to this lamp but the safety is questionable. Will it burn down the house? Anyway - this concept is JUST COOL!

thanks Dezeen

art - scrap metal robots ... recycled cuteness

Juan Carlos Federico turns metal junk into endearing robots in his whimsical digital collages. Even the mean ones look cute! Check out more of this Buenos Aires based Graphic Designer/ Illustrator's work at his website here.