Avoid nasty chapped lips this Valentine’s Day by using an all natural lip balm. It’s eco-friendly & will keep your lips moisturized without using any harmful additives.

Natural Lip Balm is usually made from natural products like beeswax, honey or peppermint. Vitamin E & shea butter are also all-natural moisturizers often used as a main ingredient in many lip balms, just check the label to make sure the other ingredients aren’t harmful.

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Show your love for the earth by not littering. Trash tossed carelessly outside often washes into storm drains, which empty into rivers & streams that eventually flow to the oceans. Pollution is a growing problem, do your part by not littering…Mother earth will love you for it!

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This Valentine’s Day instead of buying fresh cut flowers that only last a few days and are totally full of pesticide toxins -  Make your sweetie flowers that are eco-friendly because they are made from some extra scrap fabric and will last for years. Here is a great how-to guide by Becky Striepe over at Green Upgrader.

What you’ll need:

• A few pieces of long fabric scraps
• floral wire
• pinking shears
• felt
• needle
• thread
• fabric glue
• A couple of vintage buttons

How to make it:

To get started, use your pinking shears to cut your scraps into strips that are about an inch wide and four to eight inches long. There are two ways you can put these little guys together, depending on the size of your scraps. Either fold the scraps in half and layer them loop-side out, or cut longer scraps, and fold the ends into the center. Either way, you end up with a similar result which you’ll secure into place with a straight pin:

I opted to bunch some tulle scraps that I had behind the first flower and use the same tulle gathered on top of the second one. I think it makes it feel a little more romantic, but it’s totally optional.

Now sew a few stitches through the center, being careful to trap all of the fabric. Once everything is secure, you can remove the pin and sew a button onto the front!

You’re almost done! Grab that piece of floral wire, fold it in half off center, and make a 1″ loop on each of the ends. Now, cut yourself a couple of small pieces of felt, maybe around 1.5″ square, and apply a generous amount of fabric glue. Your goal here is to sandwich the loop of wire between the back of the flower and the felt. Once the glue dries, it will also make your flower’s head a little more sturdy without adding too much weight:

The glue will probably need to set overnight to dry completely. Once it’s dry, you have a couple of options! I dug out a vintage wooden spool of thread and used that as my “vase.” You could also put your bouquet into a small pot or vintage teacup full of rocks or marbles. If you want to treat it more like a traditional bouquet, you can wrap the base in some pretty ribbon, and secure it with a decorative straight pin!

A BIG thanks to Becky Striepe over at Green Upgrader for sharing her awesome eco-friendly flowers with us!

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Show your partner that you care about him or her as well as the world surrounding the two of you with these top 10 eco-friendly gift ideas for Valentine’s Day 2010.

1- Homemade card made from recycled products or an e-card
2- Fair Trade chocolates
3- Organic flowers or a live plant from your local farmer’s market
4- Homemade organic goodies or candies delivered in a recycled cookie tins
5- Organic soaps & bath oils
6- Candles made from soy or beeswax
7- Sustainable sexy under garments made from bamboo or soy fabrics
8- Wine from a local vineyard
9- Homemade dinner with fresh seasonal ingredients from your local farmer’s market
10- Donation to a charity or an organization in your sweetheart’s name

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Tweedle Press is a full-service design, papermaking, and letterpress print shop that uses eco-friendly materials while still creating stylish, quirky paper goods.

Everything about Tweedle Press is Green – including their paper, inks, packaging, & even electricity.

Paper - Tweedle Press uses a wide array of 100% recycled paper fibers & 100% recovered cotton rag.  Sometimes adding dried flowers, spices, textures, and other random materials.

Inks - Tweedle Press inks are combination of hand mixed vegetable ink colors and pre-mixed linseed oil based etching inks with a high pigment degree.

Packaging – Tweedle Press packaging materials are also as ‘low impact’ as possible, meaning recycled boxes, hemp twines, etc.

Electricity - Tweedle Press is almost entirely ‘hand-powered’. Electricity is necessary for computer design and plate making, but all of the actual pressing is hand-cranked.

Tweedle Press is really fun & funky. I just love that they take junk mail and up-cycle it into invites, RSVP’s, placecards, nametags, menus, programs, stationery, business cards & much more.

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Don’t kill that spider!

There are an estimated 40,000 species of spiders, and they all eat insects. They’re an important part of the food web and provide a natural pest control to many unwanted insects.

If you see a spider in your home, just scoop it up and place it outside in a safe grassy area.

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Valentine’s Day is right around the corner. This year make your sweetheart a pop up Valentine’s Day card from old magazines & cardboard. Here is a great video tutorial for making your own Valentine’s Day card.

Ok – so there are a couple of supplies in the video that need a little greening up to make this a really eco-friendly craft. First, it looks like she’s got a brand new envelope, but I’m sure you could round up a used one or otherwise, any light, scrap cardboard like cereal boxes, beer boxes, or frozen food containers.

Also, I’m not a big fan of spray adhesives. You might use a glue stick, or a more eco-friendly product like Ecoglue.

If you don’t have any magazines lying around, get creative…you can really use anything like old posters, books or even junk mail.

Show your love this year to all your friends & family with this DIY Valentine’s Day Pop Up Card…They’ll love it!

Posted in Eco-Products, Green Crafts, Recycling | 3 Comments »

The work place break room is the perfect place to cut down on disposable item waste. Just ask co-workers to bring their unwanted cups, mugs, plates, cloth napkins, and silverware to work to replace all those costly disposable items in your break room.

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Thrift store shopping is a great way to practice your 3 R’s – reduce, reuse, and recycle.

• Reduce – Purchasing a used item rather than a new one reduces the amount of new inputs to the environment. It also keeps all of those items that were in thrift store out of landfills.
• Reuse – Most items at thrift stores are in good condition and can be reused. Children’s clothing and toys are especially good examples of this – most children only wear their clothes for a limited amount of time before they are outgrown. In addition, some stores such as Plato’s Closet specialize in gently-used high-end clothing.
• Recycle – Thrift-store items can be recycled, or should I say up-cycled! Thrift-store goods can be given a second life by being turning into something new. Like home furnishings (pillow covers, curtains, etc.), kid’s dress-up outfits, Halloween costumes, and outdoor work clothes.

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Are your pencils & crayons becoming disorganized? Do you have too many wood logs laying around? Then it’s time to make this handy dandy natural pencil & crayon caddy.

It’s easy! Just saw down some logs to your desired height & use a power drill with the bit marked for depth by wrapping it with masking tape.

Posted in Eco-Products, Green Crafts | 2 Comments »