Saving the Earth...

The FUN way!!

If there is one thing I think we can all agree on, it's that the Earth is a beautiful planet.  But, I must say that we (humans) are acting like spoiled teenagers- leaving our stuff laying all over, selfishly using whatever we want and not thinking about leaving any for others, basically, taking our future for granted because we think we will live forever!  Well, it's time we all grew up and acted our age, well, maybe not 2.5 million years old, but you get my point!  We need to think about what we are doing to the planet and not worry so much about money and the power that comes with it.  Don't worry, that's about as political as I'm going to get.  We all know deep down what we need to do, we just need to, well, DO IT!!

So we visited a place in San Francisco that is doing their part to keep usable items out of landfills.  It's called SCRAP and it is cool!!  You know that drawer (or in our case, room) where you put stuff that isn't really needed but you just don't want to throw out?  This a whole warehouse of stuff like that!!  Companies, individuals, stores, etc. donate items that they no longer need and SCRAP sells the items to teachers, artists, or crafty people who can use it.  And they sell it cheap. We've been there a few times (and every time we come back with fun stuff) and I don't think I've ever spent over $20.  Here are a few shots of some of the finds we saw and then the details on the project we made.

Who doesn't need a coconut monkey?







or a headless mannequin?













Perhaps some items for dress up?

















You are sure to find something useful (or maybe not useful but fun).  We went with the goal to find things to make an "Earth".  You never know what items will be there, so we went with an open mind.  We decided to make a fabric collage using scraps of fabric and a large rattan round platter, or lid, or, well, I don't know what it was supposed to be used for ?!  Anyway, here's what we made...

Recycled Earth
For the project you will need:

• something round that would normally have ended up in the trash.
• scraps of paper or fabric that don't have any other use.  Greens, blues, white.
• Glue *
• scissors

1.  Cut up the scraps into small pieces.  You will need a lot of blue since the Earth has so much water :)
2.  Spread the glue on the round "thing" and place the blue fabric scraps all over. * We planned on gluing everything but I decided that it would be more recyclable (sp?) if it was reusable. We are going to use it like a flannel board and make different scenes, so we didn't use glue.

3.  At both the top and bottom make some polar ice caps.
4.  Using green scraps make the land masses.  We tried to make it look like North and South America but with minor success.

It turned out really pretty, but since we didn't glue anything down it's only ours for a little while.....kind of like the real thing :)