Upcycle Living

In the past, we had some disposable napkin rings made out of old Christmas cards. Then I made some permanent ones using remaining beads from my handbag project . These were made in 2009, and I'm still using them for special occasions. I've tried a very simple and basic weaving pattern, and it took me less than 3 hours to complete this set of 4. And I managed to use up all but 2 of the turquoise beads from the handbag project . The white beads are leftover from the beaded bracelet . For weaving instruction please see handmade beaded handbag . They've been put into good use since: Boxing day Dinner 2018 Boxing day Dinner 2018

Since the last bunch of beaded napkin rings , I've gone a little obsessed with napkin rings and have made another set with different coloured beads and design. I managed to make 5 with the leftover beads from making my choker necklace and a beaded belt. I think they look really good with my mostly white table setting and crockeries. Unlike the turquoise napkin rings , these ones have a slightly more complicated design so it took me almost 2 evenings to complete. Here is the step-by-step process in illustration: 1. I use a 0.35 nylon fishing thread (that's what I have in my drawer), but you can use a thinner one as the napkin rings are only small. I measure it to about 1.1m for each napkin ring. It's always best to use 1 whole thread for each, to save rejoining work halfway through. Start with the beads in the middle of the thread and criss-cross to make shapes: 2. Here's to complete the first circle and move on to the next row (then repeat for t...

My secondary school (high school) uniform was a bright turquoise pinafore design that everyone hated, saying that it looks like an apron; but guess what - I actually liked it 😊 Without doubt, I love aprons too (including all pinafore design clothing)! However, I have only bought ONE apron ever, which was then updated to slightly different look , and then got really worn off and was disposed of. I've then decided to not buy anymore apron - definitely not in Malaysia - where aprons are either too expensive or too ugly (and still expensive)! Since then I've transformed an old sundress into an almost instantly made apron , and went on to making this new, reversible design apron. The fabrics used here were bought originally for making placemats but then I got really busy for many months that I forgot all about it (or rather, gave up on it). Not until a recent spring cleaning that I found them stacked in a drawer. If I don't do anything with them, they will go to w...

Was tidying up my work/craft table today and found something I made a few months ago - a tea cozy! I remember spending quite a few days stitching away and bled numerous time, thankfully not staining the fabric. I must've gotten busy or distracted by something else (which happens a lot) and totally forgot about it. I'd always love looking at tea cozies as they could come in so many interesting patterns and designs. Surely we can just buy one from the shops, but since I've got quite a bit of fabric scraps lying around it's always better to make full use of them. If you haven't already noticed, this is the same fabric I used for making the access tag holder . I've finally finished off what's left. This was a relatively more complicated sewing project, as I haven't any tea cozy lying around to make reference off. All I did was guessing the structure from pictures I've seen, and put my logical sense to use. Here's what the insi...

We like throwing small dinner parties and enjoy some home cooked food and nice wines - with proper crockery and cutlery - NO disposable ones! But having to keep washing up and drying wine glasses is a pain, especially when everyone seems to get their wine glasses mixed up and decided to get a fresh one. If only we can have something to individualise each wine glass, but obviously not buy putting a horrible looking sticker label over the glass. When I first saw this brilliant product at a department store, I knew that's what I need to add to our list of wine accessories - some wine glass charms! But they aren't cheap; in fact, they are really expensive! Minimum RM50 for a box of 6 or 8 charms, and that's all you can get: just the 6 or 8 different designs. That's when I decided to make our own customised wine glass charms. I started collating everything I need: old pendants, old earrings, beads from some accessories came as unwanted gifts; and bought a bag of w...

Until we started buying screw top wine, I had been painstakingly saving up all the wine corks: cleaning, drying and storing. Thanks to my inexplainable sentiment towards the little brown thing and the thought that one day I would be able to use them for something, I've filled up a whole large shoe box. And they had been in there for 7 long years! Just when I was about to give up and decide to clean them out, I caught a glimpse of a trivet made of wine corks in the background of a TV show. Obviously this is not an original idea and surely there must be others who've already done so, but hey I managed to use up all the corks and turned them into something useful - that's good enough for me. With the help of some Selleys adhesive, I made quite a few trivets and 1 pin cushion. Most importantly: I get to keep them, not bin them ;)

I love aprons: the design, the look, wearing it. But let's face it, aprons are not cheap. And to think that it's something that I wear to block off oil stains and dirt from cooking, it just doesn't make sense to spend money on it. Oh I'm such a stingy hag 😈 This was a sundress I had but worn off over time, and I'd ripped a whole somewhere on the back. Can't give it to charity, didn't want to cut it off into cleaning cloth (not yet), so I had to do something about it, and with it. Since my old apron has become so manky, it deserves a retirement. This old spaghetti strap dress came ready handy as it came ready with 2 attached belts for back tie bow, so all I needed to do was to separate the front and the back (keep the spaghetti straps and belt attached to the front portion), hem the edges to tidy up any loose edge and threads. Only took me one afternoon (hand stitching). Introducing my new apron, formerly called sundress 😎 ...

It's frustrating when you're too busy to cook and find that the onions started sprouting. Don't bin them just yet. Peel off the rotten bits if any, place each one in a glass and fill enough water to cover the roots; they will grow into some fresh, green spring onion and double up as a nice little decoration by the kitchen window. Just make sure to replace water with fresh one every other day, and they would be good for a week or so. Once the bulb starts rotting you should harvest all the spring onion and get rid of the rest. At least by then it would have served its best to you.

We've been using normal hand towels in the kitchen, but the nail keeps ripping holes in them. And as they are often hung stacked in double layers, drying is always a problem in this hot and humid weather which means it can get smelly too. But ready made hanging kitchen hand towels available in this country are often really horribly designed yet expensive. So here's a very simple solution - DIY! One existing hand towel cut into halves + some fabric scraps + two 6" long ribbons (hanger loops I cut and saved from clothing) = two new kitchen hanging hand towels absolutely free I can really get used to doing this :)

Bought a pair of oven gloves last year, which can't withstand a single wash - the inside was some sort of fluff that started coming off. So lesson learnt: must only get oven gloves that are fully fabric made. Anyways, being the hogger that I am, throwing away a rather new pair of (non-functioning) oven gloves still bothers me. So I've turned them into a pair of mini Christmas stockings, as they are red and green and look Christmasy. The magic wand I used here is a 1.5-inch needle and some magical red threads :-) Here are the oven gloves-turned-Christmas stockings: Here is what they looked like before: Being taken apart for cutting: Nothing's wasted!

Last Christmas was the first time we ever had guests for dinner. So apart from the tree and pressies, I wanted to give the table a festive feel too, without having to spend too much or creating too much waste. My sister once brought over a stack of old season's greetings cards from the company she used to work for. Those cards were unused but just out of date. I can't send them to anyone as they had the company's logo on. So I cut the covers to make tiaras for my nieces (forgot to take some pictures of those), but we still had some left overs. So I tore the inside of the cards where the greeting message is, into long strips (by pressing a steel ruler over it). I then rolled them up and secure the ends with double sided tapes, and I got ourselves some rustic looking DIY disposable napkin rings in no time!

It took me a long time to find an apron which I'm willing to buy. But it is still far from perfect: it's got a PVC lining which makes cooking really hot, especially in this tropical country. And it's also difficult to wash. So I decided to cut off the PVC layer (which I then used to pack something to send in the post). Then I thought it looks really to dark and dull in the kitchen, that it needs some livening up. I took some leftover embroidered border I've got for years, sewed them on to the top of the apron and the pocket (B). I then cut several embroidered flowers (B) off the remaining border and sewed them on the apron, each with a purple bead (from my existing craft box) over it. Ta da. A "new" apron I'm in no hurry to replace.

Here is a pot holder made from a pair of fridge door handle protectors. I once bought this pair that don't fit the fridge door handles properly (that's why I don't like buying ready made stuff because they never seem to fit!). So I took off the velcro strips (been kept for future use), place the two flat piece back to back, sandwiched with a piece of fabric cut out from an old T-shirt (to make it thicker) and iron them together with some Wundeweb. Really handy for holding hot pots. I didn't spend anything extra on this, and I turned my frustration on buying something unfit to great satisfaction! It can be used to line hot dishes over the worktop too.

The problem with the commercialised world that we live in is that we don't actually get to find what we really want. They say that capitalism is consumer-centric but it's untrue. I've spent months looking for some decent looking placemats with simple design for our dinning table but all I could find are either bad quality placemats, often with horrible pictures on, unless I'm willing to pay through my nose for something that I'm gonna have food and wine spilled on all the time. I finally found an old set in a junk store that is really, really cheap, except there are some yellow stains on the corners. But the orangey stripes over white background looks very nice and simple and I thought I could do something about the stains. I had them cleaned, trimmed the yellow bits away by cutting them into smaller rectangles (we have a pretty tiny dining table anyway). I have a Laura Ashley denim dress I bought second hand off Ebay (for £1.50!) which is a little too long f...

We live in a disposable age; everything is highly disposable. Even most of the food outlets we go nowadays serve food in disposable plates and provide disposable cutlery. I love my sushi and these sushi bars are known for their disposable chopsticks. I had in the past used and disposed of many pairs of wooden and bamboo chopsticks, and am gutted about not being able to do anything about it. Up until I found my personal travel chopsticks, I have collected a bundle of the disposable ones. I used to wrap them in used paper napkin, take them home, wash and rinse them, dry them properly (I place them over my portable oven so whenever I make a roast it will dry things up thoroughly) and - store them away. One day I saw this wooden pot stand in a shop and that gave me some idea. I have some old wooden spatula that went sticky due to the built-up burnt on oil, so as usual I hogged on them for ages because I knew they would come in handy one day. I took two similar size ones and cut off t...

I always make a point to buy rewritable CDs so that I can reduce the unnecessary disposal. However, I can't stop others from handing me non-rewritable discs. So I still find myself collecting unwanted, damaged, or outdated discs over the years. I refuse to throw them into the bin because they take years to decompose in landfill, not to mention the amount of toxin released during the process. So I kept holding on to them and have no idea what to do with them. We decided to use them as coasters and then found out that the shiny layer started peeling after a while. So I peeled the layer off and completely and cleaned them up. Now they are all transparent, and the problem is, sometimes we just can't see them! Then I thought it would be better to give them some colours to make them more visible. We have some CD labelling pens that are only being used occasionally, so I did some graphic drawings on one side of each of the discs. We just need to turn the painted side downward so...