It was Kermit

Kermit

who first coined the phrase It’s not easy being green - but we’ve all come a long way since then!

I’m quite keen on doing things in a green way, so I thought I’d share some of the ways I manage to be a little bit green in my business.

green paint

Travelling

I think the fact that I work from home certainly helps my status in the green stakes: my commute to work is a stroll across the garden.  Not only lovely, relaxing and occasionally distracting (the pet rabbit, the weeds, the plants needing water…) but very definitely green in more ways than one!

rabbit

My commute may well be a 20-second stroll but I do travel to the post office on a daily basis as well as to craft fairs and shows.  My nearest post office is a couple of miles away and too far to walk or cycle (I’m not just being lazy - I have a problem with my hip joint which excludes these activities for me).  However, I do always combine the journey with food shopping, banking and even occasional library-visiting.  Also, my car is a small-engined one which sips petrol very slowly instead of guzzling it.  Really, I do need a bigger vehicle … but in the meantime, my tiny car can house a surprising amount of stock for fairs and shows with its back seats folded down. 

Recycling

I have set up my studio so that it’s very easy to recycle: separate bins (which are actually cardboard boxes wrapped in binbags - actual recycled bins, which will eventually be recycled again) for recyclable and non-recyclable waste.  We’re lucky here in that we get a wheelie bin collection once a fortnight for recyclable waste, which makes life easier.  We’ve also got a wheelie bin for green waste, although most of our green waste goes on our own compost heap.

Packaging

All packaging which comes into the business gets reused for outgoing parcels. 

packaging

That’s not to say you’ll always get recycled packaging if you buy from us.  We buy bubble wrap and padded envelopes as we can never get enough of them, but we do have a source of extra recycled cardboard boxes delivered directly to the studio by Mr 1st Unique Gifts every day when he comes home from work!

boxes

This does mean I spend a fair bit of time chopping up boxes to make the packaging work, but the waste bits of card are used in the garden as mulch or placed on the compost heap.  Nothing is thrown away!

chopping up boxes

Repurposing

Lots of things in the studio are repurposed: the painting table is an old door on top of two trestle frames with basket drawers (these were used to be in a utility room in a previous life).  In the picture below, you can see we didn’t even get as far as taking the handles off the door before it became a table.  It’s never usually this tidy, and you can’t usually see the handle for the jars and other painting paraphenalia.

table was a door

OK, then, this is what it more often looks like:

messy desk

The sink was an old one which was about to be thrown out when I discovered it.  The pencil tubs are syrup and honey tins.  I cut up old T-shirts to use as paint rags.  I reuse honey jars for washing paintbrushes.  I make my own stay-wet palettes to ensure paint isn’t wasted by drying out. 

storage tins palettes and paint rags

I even cut up old school summer dresses to make fabric ribbon ties on my plaques.  And oh, I have lots more ideas for upcycled products, which I hope will make it into my range one day.  I get a little bit excited by creative recycling, which I was doing long before it became fashionable - in the 1970’s, in fact, when I was probably considered a bit odd.

Energy Consumption

When we rebuilt the studio (yes, rebuilding was absolutely neccessary - it was a terrifying, dangerous mix of tin, rotten wood, asbestos and concrete held together by tangled ivy when we acquired it!) we made sure it was well-insulated.  However, we couldn’t have predicted the severity of the winter we’ve just had and its impact on our electicity consumption! 

my little car got snowed in

There’s a plan in place for reducing that though!!

woodburning stove

We are intalling a woodburning stove in the studio for winter heat.  This will be made even greener by the fact we chopped down over 40 overgrown trees recently (again, very necessary, this time for good neighbourliness and winter sun on the garden!)  We need to chop down some more, which we’ll be replanting with more manageable small trees, shrubs and a selection of fruit trees.  It does mean we’ve got a huge supply of wood to burn, and will always have at least some wood from our own trees and shrubs.

I managed to make myself some fingerless mitts which are fab for working in the cold: they were recycled from the sleeves of an old cardigan.  Nothing fancy but definitely welcome, they helped reduce fuel consumption in those cold, cold months - and they’re as green as green can be (even though they’re actually bright pink!).  The added bonus was that because they were made from something that would’ve been thrown away, it doesn’t matter how messy they get.

fingerless mitts

In the Garden

In the garden, we’re planning to hire a shredder to produce some chipped wood for the pathways and for mulching the beds.  We’ve a vegetable garden planned out, two greenhouses (already in the garden and in need of not much more than a good clearing and scrubbing), some fruit trees already in situ and more ready to plant.  There’s been lots of chainsawing going on to chop the tree waste up - and lots of stacking going on too, to dry the resulting logs out.  I’ve already mentioned the compost heap: as well as garden waste, it processes kitchen waste, the rabbit’s waste, and excess cardboard, paper and fabric into fabulous home-made compost for growing and mulching.

The pebbles in my garden were about to be thrown into a skip by my next-door neighbour when I leapt to their rescue!  This pebble feature isn’t quite finished yet:

pebbles

I have a thing for pebbles (OK, maybe I need to get out more!) and I quite enjoyed wheelbarrowing several loads of them into my garden to recreate a little bit of the seaside in my garden.  They also provide hiding places for the hundreds of frogs who call my garden home.  I love the frogs - they certainly keep the slug population under control in the most organic manner possible.

Unfortunately, the neighbourhood cats seem to like the frogs too. Not for the same reasons though:

cat

Nobody said it was easy being green.  But sometimes, the harder route is the better and more satisfying route! 

not easy

Image courtesy of http://www.greenpatriotposters.org

There is a reason I’ve called this post “Don’t Touch My Craft Room”.  Really.  Other than the fact I’ve had a bit of a re-organisation in my crafting space and plan to share some of the piccies here with you.

Here’s the reason:

craft room door plaque

One of the door plaques I sell is this one.  It surprised me that so many crafters attend craft fairs as customers (I don’t know why that fact surprised me - I attend as many craft fairs as I can as a customer even though most weekends I’m selling at them) - I only know they do because they buy this plaque.  The wording seems to be something many crafters definitely associate with!

It’s available as a hanging plaque too.

hanging plaque for craft room wall

I can change the wording.

personalised version

If you’d like a craft door plaque of your own, here’s the link: http://www.1stuniquegifts.co.uk/doorplaques.2.html

And if you’d like the hanging plaque: http://www.1stuniquegifts.co.uk/hangingplaques.html

But now onto my space.  As home-based workspaces go, it’s quite a generous size - I’m very lucky, I know.  I still manage to fill it - and mess it up!! 

This is the main space I use for painting:

my painting area

It’s often quite messy.  But also sometimes a bit like a production line:

watching paint dry

Round the corner, there are even more shelves of items ready to be finished off:

waiting to be finished and packed

It’s sometimes quite organised.

white boards

 The whiteboards keep me on track (mostly) - I update them daily.

It’s not just practical stuff that finds its way onto the walls.  I’ve put up some of my own paintings and you’ll also find postcards and photos that inspire me on the walls.  The beach hut canvas is one of mine.  I was inspired to paint this after getting lost in Devon one night.  I had to stop the car in a mad frenzy of excitement when I saw beach huts in the dark lit up by fairy lights.  It was magical, although the rest of the family thought I had completely lost the plot by this point.  They may well have been right.

pics on the wall

More of my paintings in another corner.

my paintings

This bit of the studio is a bit messy:

untidy area

I love sewing too but my poor sewing machine is feeling a little neglected these days.  It is a fabulous machine and deserves much better.  I will dust it off soon (promise!) and may even do a bit of something creative with it as well as the practical (read: boring) jobs I have lined up for it to tackle.

my sewing machine

I know I’m a bit of a virtual peeping Tom when it comes to looking at other people’s workspaces, and I know from what other people tell me that I’m not the only one.  You can see my workspace if you click here: http://www.1stuniquegifts.co.uk/blog/creating-the-garden-studio/ (or click on the Creating the Garden Studio link on the right hand side).

Here’s a link to another workspace - that of Lizzy from Lavender and Lime: http://thelavenderandlimecompany.blogspot.com/

I would’ve loved to have seen it before the three hours of tidying up!  Mr 1st Unique bravely ventured into my studio over the weekend - I use the word bravely as he is such a tidy soul, and I am not.  My workspace gets gradually worse and worse until a craft fair or event, and I (usually) tidy it up afterwards.  So I don’t really recognise Lizzy’s “calm before the storm” - for me, the calm is after the storm! 

But I love her baskets, all laid out in readiness for a fair.  Just gorgeous.  Here they are looking very tempting: