Monday 27 May 2013

A Case for Upcycling

As much as I quietly loathe car crash neolexic portmanteaus like 'chillax', 'bridezilla' and 'stagflation', today I find myself 'upcycling'. Oh the shame.

Upcycling is the art of recycling a thing into something better. Apparently. That's still recycling in my view. Or repurposing. But, whatever we call it, I've done it. Or, rather, Mrs C has.

She's spent the last couple of days preparing for an upcoming craft fair by making pencil cases and laptop and tablet bags from old off-cuts of material (she is a very experienced and exceptional seamstress and tailor). And it suddenly occurred to me that here was a possible new use for the promotional T Shirt I had printed to wear at fundraising events for my book. The book is now funded, has a different cover and will soon be in the shops so the shirt is redundant ... so the poor thing's future was looking bleak. It would probably end up spattered with paint and plaster or cut up for use as dust cloths. That just seemed ungrateful. Was there an alternative? There was indeed.


The T shirt lives on as my new pencil case - Upcycled and reincarnated. Isn't that cool?

I think so.

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