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  Looking for lots of crafts made from recycled materials? You’ve come to the right place. I go beyond soup can pencil holders here. It is all about greening up your crafting and moving toward a more sustainable way of living. This site is full of eco-friendly crafts for children and adults. Making use (re-use really) of otherwise unwanted materials is good for the pocketbook and good for the environment.

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This North American native is a wonderful source of nectar used by many butterflies. Butterfly weed is one of several species of flowers that we grow around our house to attract a myriad of butterflies.

To attract butterflies to our southern Maryland yard, we have included food for both stages of a butterfly’s life: the butterfly as well as the caterpillar. When you plant a butterfly weed you have done both. Plus, the strong orange flowers will give a festive touch to the outside extension of your home.
How to:
My girls scattered some butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberose) seeds in their garden. The seeds were a gift from a thoughtful friend. You will want to plant your seeds in a location that receives full sun. They prefer dry, sandy soil. It turned out to be easy to grow; just keep the seedlings moist. The older plants are much more tolerant of dry conditions. You can plant your seeds in late spring, summer or early fall. Either way, plan to wait until next summer for flowers. Seeds need a cold treatment before germinating. This can be done by either planting outside in the fall, or placing the seeds in the freezer for a few weeks before planting. New plants are also fairly easy to start from cuttings. Our plants have come up each year with no effort on our part and provide butterfly alluring powers. They flower all summer long and in the fall they have cool seed pods with fluff inside.
If you are a southern Maryland local (i.e. you live close enough that you can stop by), I’d be happy to save you some seeds. If collecting your own seeds, wait until the pods are already starting to open.
FYI, avoid pesticides because they kill butterfly larvae.

Butterfly Weed, a species of milkweed, is a host plant for Monarch Butterflies as well as others.
This is the monarch butterfly in its larval stage completely devouring several of our butterfly weed plants.

In an area that used to be part of our lawn, I made a garden for my two children. They have used it to grow edibles and things of beauty. This spring/ summer they decided to let the strawberry plants take over most of the growing space. Apparently you can be very tidy with your strawberries and snip off all the runners or you can let the runners do as they will. We like the second method; in which you end up with a beautiful mat of strawberry plants. My kids try to be the first each day to search for the sweet bounty. Growing a strawberry patch in place of some of your yard is twice as sweet: less lawn to mow and fresh local organic fruit besides.

Here is the kids’ garden.

What kind of cake stand do you use at a robot party? Something made from salvaged parts,… something creative…
Every party needs food so I provided our guests with robot fuel; ie cake on this industrial looking cake stand.
I combined three thrift store finds; a silver platter (silver in color, it may be silver plated, it doesn’t matter), a glass cake stand cover that lost its bottom half, and a piece of an old aluminum coffee pot (the part that was used to filter the grinds).
I glued the platter to the coffee pot piece I chose for the stand.
You could substitute anything that is metal or looks metal. Another idea is to use a large tomato can.

Here is a cute koala; he is one of the robot animals I made for my daughter’s robot party. So cute you can’t help but love him. And of course, I used recycled materials.

How to:
Gather supplies. Supplies are as follows: large soup or tomato can (for the body), tuna or cat food can (for the head), bottle caps (for eyes) with washers inside, part of an imitation flower cut in half, the part that holds the petals (for the two ears), thrift store flatware (for the arms/paws), a broken tea infuser (painted black or colored with a Sharpie (for the nose), scrap white paper (for the chin patch), the top/ bottom of a cylinder such as found on tubes of frozen juice (for the belly spot).
Glue together everything except the arms and legs and the head. I like using a magnet to connect the head to the body. In this case the magnet doubles as the neck. I also used magnets on the legs/ arms and neck because a magnet allows me to change his pose.

Experiment with forks and spoons to see what you like best. You will need to bend the flatware a little to curve around the can. An adult might be needed.

You may be interested in more robot themed ideas.
Robot costume

Build a Bot: Robot Building Party Favor Game

My daughter and I had a lot of fun making this goofy robot costume. I did all the cutting and she thought of all the embellishments. I love it when she comes up with great ideas on her own. At our robot party, we made sure we took photos of all the kids wearing the costume. The videos were even better.

Here is a cute/ funny video. Someday I hope to do a little video editing to change the sound track to something a robot would dance to.
To make this costume, we took two boxes and cut a hole for the face and another hole for a child’s head to go up into the head box.
This costume was made entirely with recycled items: cardboard boxes, broken calculator (very cool don’t you think?!), bottle tops (make good knobs), broken watch, previously used but clean aluminum foil, antennas (from broken radios)… even the arms were made from a salvaged piece of dryer vent. So many possibilities.
This project took very little time to complete.
We made this costume for a robot party but you can make one for a Halloween costume or anytime the kids have some free time.
You may want to check out our robot building game that doubles as a party favor.

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  Are you having any trouble understanding some of the instructions? Feel free to send me a quick e-mail at HesterJane@FunInTheMaking.net. I’ll do my best to answer your questions. Do you have any suggestions regarding a specific post? Maybe you have a better way and would like to share it with the other creative people visiting this site? -Hester Jane

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