Art Projects with Recyclables
Art Projects with Recyclables: An interview with Carla Brown.
Interviews are always best in audio. Listen here!
Carla Brown is a podcaster + artist who loves create art projects with recyclables + trash. She weaves plastic bags, sews flexible food packaging + designs trash fashion.
She hosts the podcast Trashmagination about the creative reuse of materials that typically get thrown away.
When not making items from trash, Carla is an innovation consultant + plays in a taiko performance group in the Washington DC area. She is originally from eastern Canada.
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How to determine What. On. Earth. to collect:
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- Look long + hard at the trash your family generates.
If products you buy come in packaging that doesn’t compost, decide whether you will take responsibility for that packaging.
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- Start a Pinterest board of ideas for what you want to do with that material.
If decide to continue purchasing a product with non-compostable packaging, find ways to creatively reuse that item’s packaging. Start a Pinterest board to keep track of your ideas.
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- Match a “making skill” to the trash/recycling material.
Not many classes teach how to make items from recycled materials, but there are many art, craft, sewing, woodworking, sculpting + other similar classes.
Look at the trash/recycling material + evaluate which skills could be useful to transform that material. If an item is flexible, for example, sewing or weaving may be a good option. If it is hard, perhaps woodworking or sculpture is the way to go.
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- Only collect items that spark your creativity.
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- Tell your friends + family what you’re collecting.
If you can gather enough materials quickly, you are more likely to complete the project + move on.
This will reduce the amount of space these items take up in your home as you wait to gather enough.
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How to store recyclables until you’re ready to use them:
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- Clean, deconstruct + make materials as small as possible.
– For wooden clementine boxes, remove all the staples.
– For toothpaste tubes, squeeze out all the paste, cut the bottom and side, then flatten it.
– For jeans, cut out the panels of denim fabric, then roll up the seams + waistbands.
– For fabric scraps, iron them flat + stack them with similar colors + sizes in Ziplock bags.
– For flexible food packaging, keep them in a box sorted by size + brand.
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- Set maximum collection amounts.
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- Set maximum “keep” times.
If something has been sitting in storage for more than a year, decide that is the time to give it away.
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- Store in clear containers.
If you can see it, you’re more likely to use it. Forget about storing materials in cardboard boxes.
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What to do with collections you no longer need:
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- Many items can have value if they are in quantity, clean + stored neatly.
If you gather more than you need for a project, there are people who likely want them. The people who value these collections are creative reuse centers, teachers, community centers + people via your local Buy Nothing group.
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- People are more likely to want your recycled material collections if you show how to use the materials.
Search on Pinterest for a material type + offer as project ideas. When giving collections to teacher, find project ideas that are age appropriate for their students first.
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Get more of Carla!
Listen to Trashmagination on iTunes.
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