Green Sexy

An Eco-Friendly Kid-Friendly Craft Project!

Our niece recently had a sleepover at our house, and while I was away at work, my wife and my niece came up with a craft project using recycled materials!  I bring home these plastic fruit cups that I get with my lunch at work and I recycle them, and it was these very cups that inspired my niece to create an ingenious little rattle! 

She and my wife glued some paper onto the outside of the cups and filled the cups with assorted beads.  Then they hot-glued the cups together, poked a chopstick through both cups and voila---you have a neat recycled shaky rattle to play with!  Check out the dramatic demonstration below!

Ansel Adams: An Artist & Conservationist

We all know Ansel Adams as a gifted photographer who is best known for his stunning black and white photographs of Yosemite National Park.  What you may not know is that Ansel Adams was also an ardent environmentalist and conservationist whose involvement in the Sierra Club furthered the success of that organization and of its environmental initiatives nationwide.   In 1919 at the age of 17, Ansel started off as custodian of the Sierra Club's headquarters in Yosemite National Park.  In 1928 he became Sierra Club's official trip photographer.  In 1930 Ansel became the assistant manager of Sierra Club's annual outing.  His artistic career was furthered when "his first photographs and writings were published in the Sierra Club Bulletin.  In 1934, Adams was elected as a member of the Board of Directors of the Sierra Club, a role he maintained for 37 years."  A volume of Ansel's photographs of the King's River region was instrumental in influencing the Interior Secretary and President Franklin Roosevelt to create Kings Canyon Park in 1940.  "In 1968 Adams was awarded the Conservation Service Award, the Interior Department's highest civilian honor" and "In 1980 Adams received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for 'his efforts to preserve this country's wild and scenic areas, both on film and on earth.' "  So thanks to Ansel Adams, we can appreciate the beauty of nature in the pictures he took and in the parks he was instrumental in helping to create.      

Here's a beautiful excerpt from a letter Ansel wrote to a friend, as revealed on Ansel Adams American Experience on PBS: 

"A strange thing happened to me today. I saw a big thundercloud move down over Half Dome, and it was so big and clear and brilliant that it made me see many things that were drifting around inside of me; things that relate to those who are loved and those who are real friends. For the first time I know what love is; what friends are; and what art should be. Love is a seeking for a way of life; the way that cannot be followed alone; the resonance of all spiritual and physical things...Friendship is another form of love -- more passive perhaps, but full of the transmitting and acceptances of things like thunderclouds and grass and the clean granite of reality. Art is both love and friendship and understanding: the desire to give. It is not charity, which is the giving of things. It is more than kindness, which is the giving of self. It is both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light of the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit. It is a recreation on another plane of the realities of the world; the tragic and wonderful realities of earth and men, and of all the interrelations of these."

Going Green Sexy with Chloe Dao!

I didn't realize Chloe Dao, a Project Runway winner would be at Blogher '07.  I was thrilled she was there leading attendees in creating our own sexy tops with easy to follow patterns of some of her simplest designs.  If you know anything about Chloe, her designs are simple and clean but nothing short of elegant, fun and sexy!  Dove provided t-shirts for us to cut and configure into new tops that redefine how knit jersey can be worn.  With scissors and ribbon and Chloe's direction, conference participants were able to make a new top in about 15 minutes.  FUN!  As an artsy/crafty gal I just had to make one too.  I found Chloe to be genuinely excited, easy to work with, a gracious and patient teacher--a real beauty.  Thank you Chloe for helping me make my top which I will model off soon after I get wider ribbon for the closure. 

Now on to the green part of the project.  While Dove did supply brand new t-shirts for us to cut up you can of course take Good Will finds or t-shirts you have on hand and recycling them by converting them into sexier versions of the quips and causes that we often sport on our chests. I find myself steering away from t-shirts because I am tired of wearing them--mine now get relegated to gym or paddling wear. I have a feeling some of them may be finding a second life.