Thursday, March 12, 2009

Welcome to my world

What is Upcycling? ~ To put it simply, upcycling is taking something old and unusable and transforming it into something usable.

I have 4 recycled tote bins in my office closet filled with old paper. Seriously. My wife can't stand it. What's in there? Well, two nearly complete sets of encyclopedias from the 1920's to start. A 4 inch thick pile of printer plates from a book on wild flowers, at least 4 atlases, french poetry books from the late 1800's, lots of cuttings from different books and magazines, it's pretty crazy in there. And that's just the paper of course. Out in the garage I have about 40 11"x11" wood trays that were pulled from a handmade mechanic's tool locker. I've been turning them into valet trays, candle trays, etc.. And then you have the box of skeleton keys that are destined to become wind chimes, the door knobs that are now curtain hold backs, the old book leather that I like to use on lots of things, cigar boxes, old metal boxes, it's all pretty exhausting really.


But, each piece was bought with one purpose in mind. To make it into something else, something beautiful and/or usable. The books are all falling apart or stained so I have no issues with ripping pages out of them and reusing the covers for notebooks or journals. And everything else is just waiting to become part of something new. My wife's weaknesses are ironstone and mercury glass, but mine will always be paper, or ephemera as it's called in the collecting world.

As a way of purging some of my materials I am starting THE UPCYCLER. It will be an online reference site for others wishing to upcycle items and I will also sell items that I have re-purposed, and will throw in some vintage one-off items to boot. Paint by number Jesus anyone?

The main website will be www.theupcycler.com while the blog attached to it will be here. Please follow my blog, I will be adding pictures of newly upcycled items as often as my business, www.logodesign-webdesign.com, my wife, www.vintagejunky.blogspot.com, and my boy allow.

More soon ~ The Upcycler

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