Bags of Fun

I can't stop! It's like the gears in a perpetual motion machine always working,whirring and engaging. Always searching for a new way to attach a pocket or a handle. Sketching out in my mind, kinda like a butcher, how best to cut a coat. Which pieces to become what part. For instance, could the lapel really be the edge of the cover flap of a bag? Wouldn't it be too asymmetrical? Too rad? Apparently not. Little Emma, The Recycled Suits Tall Messenger bag was snapped up hours after it was listed on Etsy. Don't you just love it when a plan comes together?

Ok... I'm getting ahead of myself. Last weekend after the frenzied making of suited iPod cozies, I had some time to start cutting lovely coat I got at the Sally Ann. It took some intimate getting-to-know, during this process to find out how the coat was made in the first place before I could deconstruct it. And it was fun! It was like learning to read in another language. Someone else had written her design and her work in this coat and the story was spelt out in the stitching.

Well, it looked like these 2 designs won out when it came to making my bags.

The first was Emily, a messenger bag and then came Emma, her sister and a vertical messenger.

Both their outer pockets were reworked from the coat's pockets and their straps were made from the coat's front button holes. This was so that I could make both bags adjustable for different body sizes and purposes.

The buttons also came from the old coat and I felt it gave a sense of integrity to the bags. As did reusing the inner dusky rose lining.

Since I have no talent for painting pictures, I guess making bags will just have to do.

Making Your Own Paper

The Materials

* Deckle (or any square frame with a wire/plastic mesh stretched across it)
*Mould ( another square frame of the same size of the sieve)
* A pair of stiff boards slightly larger than the sieve
* Smooth drying cloths slightly larger than the sieve
* A sponge
* A blender
* A tub or basin large enough to fit the sieve
* 50g or so of waste paper

The Method
1. Shred the waste paper and soak for at least 4 hours. Soak overnight if you plan to make paper the next morning.

2. Place a handful of shredded paper into the blender and fill with water to make up 1 litre.




3. Blend for about 15 seconds or until the pulp looks like wet cotton wool. Pour the pulp into the tub. Repeat until all the paper is used up. Add 2 more litres of water into the tub.



4. Place the mould over the deckle with the netting in between them. Dip the furthest end of the frame into the pulp mix. Level into a horizontal position. Make sure the frames are deep enough for the mould to be just covered with pulp.


5. Lift the frames from the mix keeping it level. The remove the mould and let the excess water drain.



6. Place a drying cloth over the pulp. Flip the deckle onto one of the stiff boards with the cloth beneath the pulp.





7. Use the sponge to draw out the excess water from the pulp. Gently knock the deckle netting to dislodge the pulp as you slowly lift up the sieve.


8. Repeat steps 4-7. Pile each finished sheet, separated by a drying cloth,on top of each other until you've used up all the pulp.



9. Place the second board on top of the finished pile. Place any heavy object on the top board to squeeze the excess water out. You could try standing on the pile if you want to feel more involved in the process :)





Paper Pointers

Some ideas to help make your new found skill more colourful, varied and fun

* Before you throw away the bottle with that last bit of perfume, add some water into the bottle and then pour the solution into your pulp. This nicely scents your paper.

* Stale potpourri, shredded and pulped with the paper will not only add scent but colour and texture to your papers.

* Should you want to be able to use markers or fountain pens on your paper remember that you first have to size the dried paper. This is easily done by lightly painting or spraying each sheet with gelatin or starch and then letting the sheet dry. Ballpoint pens, however, are fine on unsized paper.

Goin Green bananas

As part of my new year resolution to consolidate my blogs, for the first post of 2008, I present here a little story of how a crazy kid went green bananas... enjoy!

Funny how life moves in cycles. About 15 years ago I started a little eco company in Singapore called Green Bananas that made a paper making kit for people to recycle their own paper at home. Green because I wanted people to know it's environmental bent but more likely because I was totally green to the cutthroat world of business and Bananas because everyone thought I was crazy to give up a good and stable job for what? An unlikely little paper making kit that may not even have a market.

We did sell about 1,000 kits during the 2 or so years the little Green Bananas was out there doing paper making demos; giving magazine, TV & paper interviews encouraging people to start recycling paper in their own homes (in those days, Singapore had no recycling system for anything.


Things have changed now though) and even holding a handmade paper art exhibition called, you guess it, Paper * People * Planet.
Back then I had quit my well-paying
job as a writer for a Interior design magazine and put all my meagre savings into designing, manufacturing and marketing a simple paper making kit that made A4 paper.


It had everything you needed to make paper (apart from the blender) and packaged, quite charmingly in a jute bag.

How I managed to wrangle my friends & family to help out in it's publicity and sales I have no idea. I just stand in grateful awe that they did. We had quite a ride with it. I am willing to bet that at least 50 friends and family still remember how to make their own paper today. And if they've forgotten and would like to teach their children, the next post will help them along their way.

And this is was the purposely unintimadating instruction leaflet that came with the kit.

And now, here I sit years later, writing a blog on the beautiful diversity of handmade & recycled paper. On how people can use this humble medium of paper to help make this planet a bit better, by art & by recycling, for those who live in it now. And also for the children who will come after.

Greening the earth seemed so possible then.

And so it still is. It must be.

Because if not now, then WHEN?

And if not me, then WHO?

One BILLION Trees

I turned on the radio in the middle of a BBC interview a couple of months ago. Owen Bennett-Jones was on with his programme called The Interview. Had no idea who he was talking to or what it was about until I heard "Plant a Billion Trees". Now that caught my imagination. It turned out to be an interview with Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize Winner and environmental activist whom I'd never heard of (shows you the depth of my general knowledge!). There was something down-to-earth and compelling about the way she spoke. I listened on and was happy. Following is the BBC's website's write up on that interview. Click on the link is you want to read some more about her.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3726024.stm

"Dig a hole and plant a tree!"

Wangari Maathai is an environmental activist, a Kenyan government minister, a Nobel peace prize winner. Her despair at the chronic deforestation evident in her home country, when she returned after 15 years abroad, led to a simple act: she began to plant trees.
To date she has helped local women plant over 35 million trees in Kenya and she is challenging the global community to plant a billion trees by the end of this year.

The connections she has made between deforestation, hunger and political unrest have brought her powerful enemies as well as international acclaim; of Daniel Arap Moy, the former Kenyan President, she says: "He sure didn't like me much, did he!"

I've always believed that one of the simplest thing a person could do to help the planet remove the CO2 in the atmosphere and lower global temperatures was as easy as to plant a tree. And if you only have a balcony or a window, then plant flowers, herbs or shrubs. Just plant something. Anything.

I guess I'm not the only one who thinks that way. “The symbolism – and the substantive significance – of planting a tree has universal power in every culture and every society on Earth, and it is a way for individual men, women and children to participate in creating solutions for the environmental crisis.” Al Gore, Earth in the Balance

Much of the inspiration comes, I'm sure, from the book (and later Oscar winning animation) titled The Man Who Planted Trees. The story about a shepherd who revives a desolate ecosystem of a secluded valley by single-handedly planting a forest over a thirty year period. And what did he do?....why he planted 100 acorns a day.

Wangari Maathai has an organisation called the Green Belt Movement working in conjunction with UNEP, the United Nations Environmental Programme to get people all over the world to pledge and then plant at least one billion trees in 2007.

If you'd like to get involved, go to the UNEP's Plant a Billion Tree website by clicking on this link http://www.unep.org/billiontreecampaign/index.asp There is a space on the on the top right hand corner that tells you the target, how many people have pledged to plant and how many have already planted trees. Currently the tally stands at 1,819,898,686 pledged and 1,008,033,579 trees planted. Looks like we've hit the mark. But several million more can only help rather than hurt. It's a really comprehensive site with links to organisations around the world involved in tree planting and even has technical instructions on how to successfully plant your own tree.

"If you are thinking a year ahead, sow a seed. If you are thinking ten years ahead, plant a tree." Chinese poet, 500 BC

"The best friend on Earth of man is the tree. When we use the tree respectfully and economically, we have one of the greatest resources of the Earth."

Frank Lloyd Wright

"They are beautiful in their peace; they are wise in their silence. They will stand after we are dust. They teach us, and we tend them."

Galeain ip Altiem MacDunelmor

"Though a tree grows so high, the falling leaves return to the root. "

Malay proverb

"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."

Greek proverb

"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree." Martin Luther

"The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, 'In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon!'"

John F. Kennedy

"Trees are poems that Earth writes upon the sky. We fell them down and turn them into paper, that we may record our emptiness."

Kahlil Gibran

"A tree is our most intimate contact with nature."

George Nakashima, woodworker

"A tree uses what comes its way to nurture itself. By sinking its roots deeply into the earth, by accepting the rain that flows towards it, by reaching out to the sun, the tree perfects its character and becomes great. ... Absorb, absorb, absorb. That is the secret of the tree."

Deng Ming-Dao, Everyday Tao

"Plant trees. They give us two of the most crucial elements for our survival: oxygen and books. " A. Whitney Brown

"To me, nature is sacred; trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals." Mikhail Gorbachev

"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools. "

John Muir

"The forest is a peculiar organism of unlimited kindness and benevolence that makes no demands for its sustenance and extends generously the products of its life and activity; it affords protection to all beings."

Buddhist Sutra

"People who will not sustain trees will soon live in a world which cannot sustain people. "

Bryce Nelson

"Reforesting the earth is possible, given a human touch."

Sandra Postel and Lori Heise, Worldwatch Institute