30 Days of Creativity - Day 6: Flores

For our lack of an outdoor garden, it was necessary to create our own indoor garden. A very easy project - all that you need are paper, scissors and a stapler. I opted for more muted toned paper, but using colorful paper remnants would give that garden some extra punch. I plan to make more of these little fellows throughout the week.

I absolutely love gardens. The closest we have ever come to having a real garden has consisted of filling our window sills with planters. It's been successful thus far, and lucky for us our last couple of apartments have had great natural light and deep window sills.

Our indoor garden update for the day involved our aloe vera plant. I transferred a shoot from our larger aloe plant to a pot today. I am hoping that it continues to grow roots and makes it. [Judging by how burned my shoulders are today from a morning stroll I may be in need of some aloe soon.]

New collection.

It seems like it has been awhile since we posted photos of our creative endeavors. Don't be deceived - we still have been using our creative powers to make things; we just haven't been very good about sharing them.

I have been humming away at my sewing machine a lot lately. I've been making all sorts of envelopes (mostly black like in this past post). I've used various different thread colors and have also been experimenting with different sizes.

I am still undecided if I will actually try to sell any of these envelopes, since it takes me a good 20-25 minutes to make one. (That's if my sewing machine behaves!) Not sure I could price them in such a way that someone would actually want to buy one. Maybe they will pop up on our Etsy page soon, so stay tuned.

Anyway. I needed a solution to a problem I know many of us suffer from. Too many bags! I am always trying to use reusable bags when we go out shopping. I do this partly because we have more than enough plastic bags to use for the garbage for the rest of the year and I think it is a huge waste to always need a *new* bag. The area for "bag storage" under our sink was getting a little overwhelming. That is when I decided to make some envelopes out of brown paper bags.

These envelopes are surprisingly durable. I like how some of the bag graphics peak out of the top (like in the photo on the right from a Trader Joe's bag). I am working right now on a design to match for stationary. Once that is complete I will get more photos up.

This has been a good solution to an excess of bags. It's also been a fun recycling / up-cycling project. Sometimes you have to think outside of the box and sometimes you need to think outside of the bag.