Bottle cap Magnets

As summer approaches, it's time to find fun, crafty, eco-friendly projects to do at home. My daughter received a craft kit as a birthday present that uses bottle caps to create little mini-scenes. There are all kinds of possibilities for the things you can do with the bottle caps, but today we turned them into the ever useful refrigerator magnets.


Any kind of bottle caps will do -- beer caps, soda caps, or maybe even lids from larger bottles or jugs. Either save them up over time, or ask your neighborhood bar or restaurant if they will save them for you (always a good way to keep the word out about recycling). The craft kit we received came with pre-cut circles of pictures to put into the lids, but we also cut up magazines and box labels to use, and photographs would also be great. Just make a pattern of what size you will need, and then you and your kids can cut out little circles with different scenes for your bottle caps. You can also glue in all kinds of objects to make your bottle caps 3-D. We've used Mardi Gras King Cake babies (it looks like they're bathing in the cap), bits of broken toys and beads, just about anything you can think of. Of course this is a great way to repurpose old magazines, and those bits and pieces of toys and costume jewelry that might be hanging about. If you wish, you can seal your bottle caps with a variety of clear coats that can be found at craft/hobby shops.

After the bottle caps were decorated, we used sticker magnets to easily attach to the backs of the bottle caps. Another possiblity would be to cut up old promotional magnets that you might have laying around and use white craft clue to attach them to the bottle caps. Voilà -- instant fridge magnets!

Spanglish Miembro de la Semana

Check out this week's Spanglish Miembro of the Week!

createev1

Createev1 writes:

I am a photographer in North Florida. My favorite form of relaxation is to capture nature at it's best. I love to photograph flowers, birds, ( all kinds of animals in general) and beautiful landscapes.



Living in Florida myself, I know that it is a beautiful place to capture nature! Enjoy this wonderful artist's lovely photographs!



createev1


createev1


createev1

To see more of her work just click here

Friendly neighborhood ibises

Take a look at some of our friendly feathered friends who dropped by for a snack!

Spanglish Miembro de la Semana

Check out this week's Spanglish member of the week: tumbleweedstudios

This very talented and busy mom is a professional digital artist who specializes in the giclée making for artists and galleries. She is also a crafter and an explorer who is elaborating on her jewelry designs.

In her words:

"I love to try new ways to make art, I always tumble around things that inspire me and make meaningful art out of them . So you'll be seeing more of me in the next days, months and hopefully many years to come."

Recycling in the garden – Part Un

If I weren’t vegetarian I would say that this is a way to kill two birds with one stone (maybe it’s a way to stun two tofurkies with one stone?), but a rain barrel is a great way to both reduce and reuse all at the same time.

Water is a limited resource, particularly this time of year in Central Florida. There are lots of ways to reduce water consumption in the home, but one of the areas that deserves attention and is one of the most wasteful uses of fresh water is irrigation. Aside from choosing native plants for landscaping and reducing the need for irrigation through xeriscaping, rain barrels are very effective tool for catching and storing rainwater to use in the garden, thus reducing the need for city water.

I’m not the handiest of people in a carpentry sense, so I signed up for a class offered by my local county to get help in constructing my rain barrel. It took very little work and materials to construct the one I use. My food grade quality drum is recycled, and the other materials are easy to find at any hardware store. Easy instructions can be found on line (one to check out would be http://www.motherearthnews.com/Do-It-Yourself/Rainwater-Harvesting-Rain-Barrel-Setup.aspx).


Last year we connected the rain barrel to an extra soaker hose we had, but soon found that we didn’t have the water pressure to make this work well enough to distribute water through the garden. This weekend we upgraded the rain barrel irrigation by connecting damaged hoses (yet another way to recycle/re-use!) with holes drilled every six + inches. This proved to be a terrific project for older kids learning to use tools. We had to figure out how to use the hose repair/attachment kits to connect our damaged hoses and then we had all of those holes to drill.


Project was completed in very little time and is working great. Now all we have to do is wait for it to rain:-)!

Spanglish miembro de la semana

Check out this week's miembro de la semana: agmode

She describes her work as "wearable art" and this is truly the case with her lovely collection of crocheted and knit accessories.