Incredible Crafts Room Uses Cheap Space-Saving Solutions Design is one thing – deployment is another. All of the ingenious storage and shelving in the world cannot help if the person utilizing them does not do so with forethought and intentionality, as this incredible space-saver craft room illustrates. Etsy seller Megan of?Crafty Intentions used off-the-shelf solutions like IKEA and Lowe’s wall shelves, flea-market find and standard-sized glass jars, lights and other economical products to piece together this elaborate-looking system for her home crafts area. Stored with a sense of immaculate organization are endless collections of beads, fabrics, yarns, ribbons and other material scraps, odds and ends … the list goes on, and all readily at hand for on-demand sewing and general crafting purposes, placed on dowels, suspended from strings in baskets, slotted into cabinet drawers, hung from the walls, laddered along -stepped-up, wall-mounted shelves and more.
Kitchen Gardens: Your Own Potager Kitchen gardens have been around since people first decided to grow plants for their use rather than simply gathering them from the wild. It's the ultimate in practical gardening—growing fruits, veggies, herbs, and edible flowers right outside the kitchen door. Step outside, harvest the freshest and most flavorful produce, then cook and serve. What could be easier or better than that? In England and France, where kitchen gardens are called potagers (poh-tah-JAYS), a lot of planning goes into making sure these humble gardens are as attractive as they are practical. Whether you design a simple kitchen garden or an elegant potager, here are some basics to get you started. Choosing Plants Because space in a dooryard garden is always at a premium, reserve your kitchen garden for delicate crops you want to pick a bit at a time—lettuces and other salad crops, scallions, radishes, edible-podded peas and cherry tomatoes. Include some perennial crops and containers in your kitchen garden, too.
Bicycle Tutor - Bike Repair Video Tutorials DIY Succulent Pallet Table | Far Out Flora Max with the new Succulent Table. Can you believe that our latest DIY project was once just a couple of junky pallets and some scrappy table legs? Crazy…if I didn’t have photos, I wouldn’t believe it myself. Not too long ago, we whipped out a coffee table sized succulent table out of an old shipping crate. Now we scaled it up. The pallets. First bit of advice, deconstructing pallets are a big pain unless you have the right tools…and our hammer and wall scrapper wasn’t quite doing the trick. Couple good planks. Love the scares of time left on these chunks of pallet wood. Attaching the legs. After pulling apart two pallets, we used the 2 x 4 sized boards to make a rectangular frame to attached the appropriated table legs. Dry run for fittings. Like TV magic (and 2 days later), the table was more or less put together. Megan with some semps. After a weekend of slivers and sweat, we finally got to plant this baby. Getting messy. Packing them in. Yeah, we didn’t hold back on jamming them.
5 Secrets to a ‘No-work’ Garden | Eartheasy Blog - StumbleUpon It took over 20 years of gardening to realize that I didn’t have to work so hard to achieve a fruitful harvest. As the limitless energy of my youth gradually gave way to the physical realities of mid-life, the slow accretion of experience eventually led to an awareness that less work can result in greater crop yields. Inspired in part by Masanobu Fukuoka’s book, One Straw Revolution, my family experimented with gardening methods which could increase yields with less effort. Fukuoka spent over three decades perfecting his so-called “do-nothing” technique: commonsense, sustainable practices that all but eliminate the use of pesticides, fertilizer, tillage, and perhaps most significantly, wasteful effort. Here are the strategies we used which enabled us to greatly increase our garden yield, while requiring less time and less work. 1. With ‘no-till’ gardening, weeding is largely eliminated. 2. Gardeners are always on the lookout for free sources of clean organic mulch to add to their garden.
Loft Bed turns Single-Floor Studio to Two-Level Apartment The thought of loft-style sleeping may bring back childhood memories of kids’ bunk beds … but for urbanites in small not-quite-double-height apartments like this one in New York City, clever space-saving furniture designs like this one can also help make the most out of tiny-interior dwellings with low square-footage, narrow layouts and limited access to natural light. A few simple white wall and ceiling/floor planes added by KSWA help divide spaces within this (essentially one-room) redesigned residence, creating an entrance passage – while providing enclosure from above and the side for part of the kitchen and a desk workspace below. The resulting small hall has a side ladder leading up to the bedroom. Also, by thickening the vertical-wall zone a hallway closet is created for much-needed additional storage as well as further structural support for the loft space above. The bedroom itself is a brilliant combination of cozy and open.
Arborsmith Studios Recycled Tin Can Flower Caddy While I’m really trying hard to accomplish some of my indoor projects, it is just way too hard as my attention is drawn outdoors to the warm summertime weather that greets me each morning. I hope you’ll stick with me through a few more garden projects before I’m forced to tackle my indoor to-do. I was thrilled to find out this weeks CSI Project was a Martha Stewart Inspired Challenge. {not to mention the guest judge this week is the Martha Stewart Craft Department – how exciting!} Photo Credit {marthastewart.com}I choose to make a flower caddy inspired by this Tin-Can Caddy posted on Martha Stewart’s website {here}. The materials needed for the flower caddy are;6 Lg 4 inch Diameter Tin Cans {emptied and cleaned}A Scrap Piece of 1X6 Pressure Treated Deck Floor Board {cut to 9 inches long} To make the handle I used a 2 1/2 inch Hole Saw Drill Bit. It cuts a perfect circle, quick and easy, every time! It’s now ready for some beautiful blooms. I choose white vinca. So simple and sweet.
Welcome to Floridata Hempcrete House: World’s First Hemp & Paper-Walled Home Hidden between the walls of this one-of-a-kind residence are piles of hemp, long touted as a sustainable material with many eco-friendly uses but rarely thought of as a building material. For this home, however, something special was required: the designer created it for his daughter, who has extreme chemical sensitivities that limited what could be used in its construction. Necessity, as they say, is the mother (or father) or invention. Mixed with other materials, the resulting ‘Hempcrete’ used by Push Design may be a bit misleading by name – it is not a structural substance, but rather an insulator and air purifier. The outside of the walls feature a stealthy surprise as well: instead of typical wallboard or sheet rock, a composite cardboard-like, paper-based and fully-structural covering is used that is both non-toxic and fully recycled (and recyclable in the future, for that matter).
DIY Outdoor Garden Chandelier Round-up I am eager to get home (on a red-eye flight tonight) and back to some projects and normal life. I have a patio project going on that should be nearing completion this week. Once finished, I am excited to start adding features — like a beautiful garden chandelier. I have lots of great, inexpensive, DIY options that I have rounded up for your inspiration and my own. My personal favorite for my particular project is the beaded dollar store option, what is yours? Here’s a simple DIY garden chandelier tutorial from Ecologue. The full tutorial for this basket variety is at sunset magazine. This outdoor chandelier was made from beads found at the dollar store and the full directions can be found at dollar store crafts. These elegant glass Bubble Chandeliers can be made from directions found over at Re-Nest . It’s not lit, but still a beautiful concept. It’s just a simple pot rack….but stylishly mixed candles and succulents create quite a pretty scene.
DIY Garden Markers This year I’m planting my herbs in the sunniest corner of our yard, so hopefully they won’t turn yellow and die again. Third time’s the charm, right? I don’t really need herb markers (I mean, it’s pretty easily to tell the difference between basil and rosemary), but they are so darn cute that I decided to make myself a set with my old stash of polymer clay and rubber stamps. This is what you need to make your own: oven bake-able polymer clay rolled into 1.25″ balls (one ball for each marker) appropriate baking dish (according to package instructions) a rolling pin a butter knife rubber letter stamps an oven Roll each clay ball into a coil about 5.5″ long. Use the dull side of your knife to trim one end into a point (the dull side won’t leave behind serrated marks), and shape the edges of each marker with the flat side of your knife. Stamp your garden markers, and bake them according to the clay package instructions.