Friday, July 13, 2012

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.

Friday, July 6, 2012

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!