Collages

A new seed catalog arrived, so collages were made from last year's!

Arrowheads

Jed Shepler of Houston, Texas found lots of beautiful old glass in various archaeological digs, and knapped these splendid arrowheads. I think this is definitely one of the most wonderful things I have ever received in the mail. 

Jed, thank you!

Post- Valentine's

We found more than fifty dozen roses and pulled off their petals to distill rose oil.

Potentially dangerous in many forms

I built nunchaku (nunchucks) from plastic bags. The "chain" is made from twined fruit bags (the kind that you find on a roll in the produce department.) The handles are thermoformed shopping bags, which became very dense and hard when the many layers of plastic were laminated together.

I made the ends of the handles into two types of flowers: a rose on one side because this flower was originally printed on the shopping bags, and a ginger flower on the other side because I enjoy the form.

This isn't the huge project that I intended to make, but beginning progress on that looks like this:

It took me years to save all these colors!

Upcycling

I've been collecting colorful plastic bags for several years. I like to execute textile techniques in plastic, and make utilitarian things like rope. I've been waiting a long time to use many of the bags in one project. This week I'll finish an entry for an upcycling contest (among doing many other things!)