iPad sleeves for Christmas

Now that my (extra long) christmas holidays have started, I work on increasing my stock of  upcycled sleeves for iPad mini and iPad 2 and 3, which are, by the way, very nice gifts for Christmas. After each new sleeve that is finished, I am more satisfied with the result, and I love the colorful prints of the tetra packs!

In the meantime I write my holiday greeting cards for friends, family and neighbors. Let me take this occassion to wish you also very cheerful Christmas days, and a blessed new year!

Marjan

ipad mini cover from upcycled tetra brik

I got some requests for iPad sleeves. So I started to design these as new items for my etsy shop. 

Currently I have sleeves for iPad mini, but I will soon create some for iPad as well. They have a zipper on the short side, and are lined with felt, to protect your precious little iPad. 

I hope you like them!

Marjan

Trashilicious

Yesterday I came across a nice Belgian webshop, that I'd like to share with you: Trashilicious.
It is a webshop that sells bags, jewelry and home deco made of upcycled materials, coming from all parts of the world: from the Filipines, Vietnam, France, Brazil, Ghana...

Their items are made of car tires, paper, cans, plastic bags, plastic bottles (PET), to mention a few. Really nice!

Packing for De bePARKte Oplage

Today I prepared for De bePARKte Oplage in Antwerp, which will take place tomorrow (23rd of September) in Park Spoor Noord. I am looking forward to a special day, with lots of creative people, beautifully crafted items and many visitors, looking for unique products.

I will sell my purses, bags and pouches, my diy kits for creating your own cross stitch monogram tags, small gift boxes and bag tags. All made of tetrapack.

Hope to see you there!

Hoera is selling on crafts market in Antwerp

Some good news: I will be selling my upcycled purses and pouches on a crafts market in Antwerp on the 23rd of September. It is called De bePARKte Oplage, because it takes place in a park, in the north of Antwerp, and all items that are sold there are made in small quantities.

So everything that is sold there, is unique and handmade. The market is in a shelter, so no worries about rain. I'm looking forward to it, and would feel honored if you would pass by to say hello!

Marjan

New collection of upcycled bags and purses

I started walking around with my upcycled bag (see my previous post 'Upcycked bag made of tetrapack' , and got so many enthousiastic reactions (thanks to all!) This encouraged me to make more upcycled bags,  not only bags with the print on the outside, like the bag on the left, but also with the silver colored side of the tetra pack on the outside. Personally these are my favorite :) If you are interested to have such a bag, feel free to visit my Etsy shop, or contact me (marjan[underscore]geerts[at]hotmail[dot]com) for a custom made upcycled bag or purse.

Upcycled bag made of tetra

A while ago I pinned a nice upcycled bag on Pinterest, that I found on destinationweddingstore. I found that is was repinned immediately by other pinners. I adored this bag as well, and also the idea to create a bag out of tetra myself, because it is a durable and waterproof material. Last week I started this DIY project, and made myself a bag out of milk packs.

The result is pretty pretty: It is a small square bag with two handles, which can contain my wallet, phone, keys and agenda and more small stuff. I added one of my upcycled tags to one of the handels, to give it a personal touch. For my sewing machine, it was quite a heavy job: I broke two needles while making this bag, but it was definitely worth the effort.

I have a feeling that this is the first, but certainly not the last bag that I will make out of tetra. This first experiment will certainly be followed by other bags, purses, pouches and boxes. To be continued....

Collecting tetrapacks

A while ago, I started asking family and friends to collect tetra for me. The only way to create a stock, and have a backup to upcycle large quantities of tags or boxes, is to start collecting this material. 

A few months before, I started searching for tetra in large quantities, the kind of material that professional painters used to lay on the floor, to protect it against paint, or chalk, when they're renovating a building. I read somewhere that they use misprints from the tetra industries, but I couldn't find those rolls in the big painting wholesale shops in Antwerp and surroundings. I found out that it is forbidden to sell and use this material with the original prints in the painting branch, because of copyrights. The only tetra that I could find was tetra in white or brown, which produced especially for the painting branch. So this has nothing to do with repurposing, reusing or upcycling!

So the only way to do some proper upcycling, is to use juice and milk packs that come from peoples fridge. Now that I asked my family and friends to help me: I get new packs every week, so my collection starts to grow. 

So this is a nice moment to ask all of you: if you live in the Antwerp region, you want to spent less on your PMD bags (special garbage bags for plastic and metal packaging, that cost a fortune) and you love upcycling, please comment on this post, and we will find a way to get your empty tetrapacks to my place.

The story of Hoera

Hoera! Today I created my 'About Hoera' page on Etsy: this is a sneak peek into the world of Hoera's webshop. So if you're curious to know how I started this shop, why it's called Hoera and what is happening in my home 'studio' (not much bigger then my kitchen table), feel free to take a look. Hope you like it!

Grandma's upcycled melon seed necklace

One of the things I learned from my grandma: creating a melon seed necklace. It might be one of my first experiences with re/upcycling. In fact, it is a very easy thing to do, with a very nice result, which I like to share with you: 

1. Buy a Galia melon
2. Cut it in pieces 
3. Remove the seeds
4. Wash them in water
5. Dry the melon seeds on a paper towel
6. Use thread and a needle to tack them up to a beautiful natural necklace.
7. Enjoy! (and don't forget to eat your melon)

Note: add some other natural colored beats, if one melon doesn't give you enough seeds for a long necklace! 

Hoera on Love2Upcycle

To my own surprise, my DIY greeting card kit (from upcycled cardboard) got featured on the Love2Upcycle blog. I'd like to thank the Love2Upcycle Etsy team for their interest and the nice blog post!

I wrote a tutorial about upcycling cardboard about these greeting cards a while ago. Happy upcycling!

Yellowed embroidery pattern

I was looking up some thread in one of my 'treasury' boxes (I keep my crafting materials in a couple of  boxes in an empty bedroom), and came across an old embroidery pattern that I ones used in my teenage years, that was completely yellowed. This pattern consisted of all kinds of tiny patterns of leaves, letters, numbers and fruitbaskets.

In the past weeks I created some tiny cross-stitch art-works myself (of a heart and a boat), but I didn't have the courage yet to start stitching letters and numbers myself. This pattern was exactly what I had been looking for on the internet, and now I found it in my own home: a long forgotten treasure. I created some initial tags the day after, embroidering letters on tetrapak tags, which (I can image) are perfect for a wedding or a baby shower.

How to make an upcycled gift box?

Recently I found out how to easily create a gift box, using tetra pack. Tetra is a material that everyone has at home: it is the packaging of your juice or milk or many other nourishments. And you will probably throw away many of these packs weekly, without thinking of what a beautiful material this is. Tetra often has a wonderful silver gleam on the inside and an always surprising print on the outside.

You probably know the little purse made out of tetra tutorial, that is circulating on the internet. This is an awesome way to upcycle a tetra pack, but you can do so much more with tetra. For example: create a shiny little gift box. Below I describe how to cut and fold a basic box and a lid out of tetra. How to decorate it, that is up to your own imagination. Follow the steps to make your own!

1. Before you cut open your tetra pack, make sure that you clean it: pour some water in it, shake it (repeat ones or twice), then cut open the pack and rinse it again with water.

2. Dry it carefully with a towel.

3. Choose which side of the tetra should be on the outside of your gift box. In this example I choose to have the grassy print with the cows on the outside.

4. On the other side (the side that you want on the inside of your box) you draw with a pen the lines along which to cut or fold. For the dimensions, see the drawing above.

5. Use a cutting knife or scissors to cut out the two shapes, both box and lid.

6. Use a stump pencil (or any other object) to draw lines along the dashed lines to prepare for folding.

7. Put double sided tape on the indicated area's.

8. Fold the little faces inwards, and cover them with the faces that hold the double sided tape.

Et voilà! Your gift box is ready.

(Variations: Put the silver coloured side of the material on the outside and decorate it with ribbons, embellishments, thread, anything that comes to your mind. Or make a tiny little box by adjusting the dimensions, with just a little calculation extra.) For more examples of boxes and tags made of tetra, visit my Etsy shop.

Upcycled paper and cardboard examples

Since a couple of weeks I started to collect examples of upcycled paper and cardboard. Many people are actually appreciate the beauty of cardboard and paper!

I collect these examples on Pinterest, which is a nice platform for collecting your own interests and combining them with the findings of other people. Check-out my Pinboard!

Tetra pack makes beautiful tag

Ever counted how many tetra packs go through your hands every day? They have the purpose to protect your purchases from any damage during transportation and to make the consumption of your food easier (they help to easilly poor and store your milk, for example). But in a couple of days or even hours you throw them in the garbage can.

Some of those tetra packs have beautiful graphic designs printed on them: besides the brand logo, the name of the product and many product details, they show fruit, grass or even baby's! On the inside tetra has this enchanting silver gleam, that is never seen by the consumer. Tetra is also very thick. It is much thicker than most of the paper or cardboard sheets that you can buy in the DIY store.

I layed aside a couple of tetra packs, to see what I could do with this material. Of course I had to wash it properly. And I found out that the tetra from the tomato soup had become completely red on the inside, which makes it useless. From the tetra packs for milk and juice, I was able to make some pretty nice tags. Using cutting tools for cardboard, I made pieces of 3,5 x 4,5 cm with a star cut-out and a small hole for a ribbon. If you haven't got those punchers to cut a shape out of the tetra, you could also use a sharp knife for detailed cardboard cutting, to create a cut-out.

The juice packs give the tags this extra exotic touch: on the backside they have lovely prints of pineapples, oranges and banana's. Decorating a gift or a treat with these tags is perfect for a birthday, a summer barbecue or even for christmas (although this is still far away :D)

Cardboard upcycling Tutorial

Every two weeks the city services pick up boxes full of old paper and cardboard in our street. Each household collects a box or two, full of old papers, packaging boxes, magazines, old postcards and tickets. 


I became more aware of the old paper in my home, when I went to print an invitation card at a copyshop in our neighborhood. I had to pay almost 5 euro's for one sheet of 200 gram's A4 with a full-colour print on only one side! That is really a costly business. I thought that printing my own designs would make me poor, and I started to think how I could overcome this... Next time I dumped a cereal box in the bin, I noticed what a brilliant colours were printed on this box, and how thick this cardboard actually was. I could use this cardboard to create some special postcards. Eureka!

1. The first step was to collect a couple of discarded boxes, some old christmas cards, two perfume boxes with nice colours and even some with golden prints. 
2. I cut out the nicest pieces of cardboard in squares of 3 x 3 cm. 
3. When I had a big pile of squares, I started to combine the squares in mosaics of 3 x 3 matrixes, using colours that were quite similar. 
4. I  created 12 postcards by applying each mosaic to a blue folded postcard of 10,5 x 14,8 cm. I used adhesive foam (for 3D cards) to lift up the squares a bit from the card. 
5. This is really fun to do, especially making the mosaics just right and  sending the postcards to my friends and family, who like to get those at their birthday! 


Perhaps a good idea for your easter weekend? These cards are also available in my Etsy shop, as a ready made set, or as a DIY kit. 

Welcome at my blog!

This is my very first (and a very short) blog post, to welcome you at my blog and to make myself comfortable around here. I intent to write regularly about my crafting activities and anything that is related to my Etsy shop 'Hoera!'.

You can already take a look there: www.etsy.com/shop/Hoera

Enjoy!