Upcycle Contest!

hand painted silk skull scarf with tee shirt lining, originally uploaded by crrysstall.

Another contest! When this one first was announced, I thought to myself, I'm not going to enter, it's not really my thing. This Etsy competition was about Upcycling, a word, "coined by William McDonaugh and Michael Braugart in their book on ecologically intelligent design, Cradle to Cradle. In the simplest terms, upcycling is the practice of taking something that is disposable and transforming it into something of greater use and value."

A very noble undertaking, this concept can do nothing but help the world. Because if you have ever been to your local landfill, you will be shocked + amazed at the amount of stuff that we throw away. So, as the contest deadline neared, an idea struck me. Well, I had already been struck by the actual idea quite some time ago, but the idea to go ahead and create the item and enter it in the contest was new. Like a lot of people I have a ton of old tee shirts that I just don't wear anymore. They could have holes or rips or for whatever reason would be destined for the trash or donation or the next yard sale. So, instead of just getting rid of them I decided to use the tee shirt fabric to line one of my silk scarves. Voila! A teeshirt-lined scarf! I like how this one turned out, the tee shirt makes it super cozy and maybe even beefs it up enough for a guy to wear. I'm looking forward to perfecting this design and making more...

I love the idea of basically creating new things from items that would ordinarily be discarded. There were some amazing entries and I look forward to the announcement of the winners on February 1!