Upcycled iPod Speakers Tutorial

20 Feb 2011 2 Comments

by katsmama in arts and crafts, environmentalism Tags: , ,


This Christmas I requested mini speakers for my iPod touch- the kids came through with some little round ones. DH steered them toward speakers that have a battery, so they don’t drain so much power from the player.

However, what I wanted the speakers for was for playing music outside- I mostly hate earbuds- I want to be able to hear what’s going on around me. I wanted something portable, and cute.

Enter the upcycled jewelry box from the thrift store with holes cut in sides and rope lid with cool paint job and funky clasp… that’s a terrible name. Speaker Box 3000, aka SB3. iBox?

We’d better think of a cool name, because this could be the girl’s summer job-manufacturing and selling these. We’ll get all the thrift store boxes we can find.You know you want one!

Step 1 Find a box. Our local ARC has a ton of wooden boxes of all sizes and conditions. You might even have a box already, just begging to be used. I got our on orange tag day, so it was half price, only $2. The original Hobby Lobby tag was still on it- somebody paid 10 bucks for it…

Step 2 Find speakers. Like I said, these were Christmas presents, but I’ve seen similar ones at Walmart for around $5.

Step 3 Cut holes. there could be a step 2 and a half:  buy a hole saw, which is what I did. They fit onto a drill, and come in various sizes. My speakers are roughly 2 1/4 inches in diameter, so that’s the size I bought. It was about $8. I already had a drill, and since I plan on making more than one, I figured the $8 was worth it. I might go around looking for things that need holes cut…Anyway, step 3, put the box in some kind of vise, or clamp, or hold it steady some way, then cut the hole. You could also probably use a coping saw, but I decided to invest in the hole saw.

The hole saw is visible on the workbench- the boy was amazed by the tool. "How did you get them so symmetrical!?"

Step 4 paint the box. The girl helped- I picked the colors- kind of turquoise on top of vibrant green, with some sanding- a little vintage-y, as the girl said. Depending on the box you start with, you might decide not to paint. 

The original color was virulent pink, with a butterlfy decal on top. The girl was happy to paint it.

Step 5 Install the speakers with hot glue…. I have some foam, so I plan to cut out a block, then a rectangle for the iPod and battery case. I also need to add a handle and clasp.  The plan is to be able to carry the box around the garden, so I can weed the asparagus and listen to tunes… I’ll post a photo when the paint is dry.

Gift bags

29 Dec 2010 3 Comments

by katsmama in arts and crafts, environmentalism, holidays Tags: , ,


A pile of presents, wrapped and ready to go. Oops, one of the books is peeking out.

Last year at Christmas, I was appalled at how much wrapping paper got thrown away, as I have mentioned before, so I decided to make some bags, and use scarves to wrap other presents, Furoshiki style. I have been buying scarves every time I go to thrift stores, but I put off making bags until just a couple of days before Christmas.

I’m usually not so good at follow through, but this year, I did actually make some bags for gifts for my immediate family, and some extended family. I think there were only a few presents in paper that came from my house, and a couple of others that were packed in re-used paper gift bags. I was still appalled at how much paper got thrown away, but at least hardly any of it was mine.

I always give everyone at least one book, so I wanted adjustable bags with side gussets for thick or thin books, and an adjustable closure. I modeled these after a lunch bag pattern I found in a book.

I used a pattern for a lunch bag that I found in “Bend the Rules With Fabric” to make book bags for DH and the kids, and kind of pimped out some of those freebie drawstring backpacks with applique. Last spring, I was given a whole bunch of string backpacks from the Census Bureau. I was supposed to give them to my students, but none of them really wanted one. I couldn’t throw them away, but didn’t want to carry around a census backpack, either.  

 The homemade bag  I am proudest of, though, is for my great-niece- I looked at the construction of the freebie backpacks, said to myself, “That can’t be too hard” and whipped one up for her in red velvet. She’s going to be 4, she needs a red velvet backpack!
Now, next year, I will have the bags that already exist, and I’ll make a few more, and so on and so on. Never buying wrapping paper again…

I stitched a square of red silk onto this canvas backpack, then cut out a bluejay, freehand. It took me a couple of tries. I mostly wanted to cover up the logo on the bag.

Finally, rain.

15 Oct 2010 Leave a comment

by katsmama in environmentalism Tags:


When I got up to let the cat out before dawn the other morning, I heard the rain on the roof. It soaked the soil and chilled the air, knocked some leaves off the trees.  There isn’t enough moisture yet to catch us up from a month of drought, to expand the soil and fill in the cracks, but there is enough moisture to rinse the dust off the leaves and curl the girl’s hair. 

Water is important. What if there wasn’t enough snow in the winter to melt off and fill the chain of resevoirs that loops through town? I have worked to make my garden drought tolerant with mulch and rich soil, but I have to count on resevoir water to keep it alive when the rain doesn’t come. 9,000 gallons during the month of August, according to my water bill.

The girl’s class just raised money to send to charity: water www.charity:water.org  to dig wells in Africa. Each kid in the class brought in a dollar or two, and it will make such a difference for people far away. I’m sad that we complain about brown lawns, when there are people in the world that walk miles to fill jugs, and we use thousands of gallons every month, for showers, laundry, toilets. To water my trees and grass and fill my hillbilly goldfish pond.

There's been some attrition in the goldfish community- the only survivor is a good hider.

I’m thankful for the rain.

Puddles in the leaves.

Water in the west

27 Sep 2010 Leave a comment

by katsmama in environmentalism, gardening, learning


A dusty spider web, waiting for rain.

 

I recently learned about  Liebig’s law,( http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/  ) an ecological principal I wasn’t familiar with before. I always blame my lack of scientific knowledge on the fact that my junior high science teachers were ski coaches, and then I had the football coach for biology in 10th grade. By the time I got Mr. Marta in my junior year, I was already on the road to being an English major. I’ve been trying to make up for it in recent years.  Anyway, Liebig’s law is basically that whatever resource that is necessary for an organismto survive is in the shortest supply is what puts an upper limit on the carrying capacity of an environment for that organism.  For worms, it might be organic matter, for tomatoes calcium, humans on the Planet Express Ship, oxygen… in my garden, in Northern Colorado, the limiting factor is water.

I read a lot of organic gardening books, and magazines, and most of them are centered on the east coast, where wet soil is the problem. There is lots of information about drainage, and raised beds to dry out your soil faster in spring, and waterlogged roots and certain plants not liking “wet feet”

 I noticed today that there are cracks in the soil of my flagstone path. The sand that separates the pavers is falling thru to the center of the earth. There are probably cracks in the beds too, but the mulch hides them. I have run the drip system in the beds, and the sprinkler in the lawn, but I don’t water paths, so the cracks will get bigger until it rains. We had a misty day last Saturday, enough to make it cold and unpleasant for the boy’s soccer game, but it didn’t close up the cracks in the soil.

I went to Massachusetts on vacation this summer, and it rained solidly much of the time we were there. I asked landscape professional (okay, he was a tree trimmer) how much rain they averaged in that area, and he didn’t know how much rain they got. He shrugged, and looked at the other guys on his crew, and guessed about “an inch a week?”

 Around here, people tend to know , to the fraction of an inch, exactly how much moisture we’ve gotten- they’ll say “well, the weather service says half inch, but I only had three tenths in the rain gauge.”

It has not rained here for almost a month- we’ve had some scattered showers, but the soil is cracking, and the woods are burning. The fire in Boulder has made national news, my great uncle has had to evacuate his house. There was another fire near us, DH took the kids up to take pictures for the paper (link). A big pile of hay is on fire in Fort Collins, with sunny and warm in the forecast for the next week.

Mulch and compost help, and using native plants, and the Denver water board has a ton of information on dry climate planning and planting (www.denverwater.org/Conservation/Xeriscape ) I am experimenting with a sunken bed, the opposite of raised, obviously. I have dug out about 4 inches of soil next to my horse tank, and I’m adding some compost when I put in tulips and irises. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I dug out a couple of buckets of soil, and will fill this in with compost. It's ugly now, but wait til next year...

 When I see the smoke in the air, I wonder about the future- I can drag the hose to the raspberries, and run the sprinklers to keep the trees alive.  I hope for rain, though 

 

I don’t know karate, but I’m a black belt in furoshiki

17 Sep 2010 Leave a comment

by katsmama in arts and crafts, environmentalism, holidays Tags: , ,


In the old days in Japan, people used to walk to the public baths- in fact, they still might, if this Shonen Knife song is any indication. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJz3ACnCKJY  People would tie up their stuff in a bundle to take with them. Furo means bath, and shiki means bundle, and because in Japan there is an art to making everyday things beautiful, furoshiki has become an art. There are different folds, different wraps were created, beyond what I think of as a hobo bundle.http://furoshiki.com/techniques/

oooh, pretty tags, too

People gave gifts wrapped in fabrics, with different ties best suited to different sizes and shapes of packages.
After WWII, when paper became cheaper than it had been in Japan, and it was fashionable to lose the old style of doing things, and adhere to new, furoshiki declined as an art. People wrapped in paper.

As a green American (actually, I’m a white American, but I like to think of myself as environmentally aware) I hate wrapping things in paper. Also, I’m really bad at it. I used to work at a Hallmark store, and hated being on “complimentary gift-wrap” duty. Picky people would stand over me thinking to themselves, “I could have done this better myself” and they likely could have done it better- I was hopeless. Even now, I claim my kids have wrapped the packages at Christmas, because it looks like it was done by a 5 year old.
Last Christmas, there were 15 people opening presents at my family’s celebration. There were 2 garbage bags full of wrapping paper thrown away when we finished. And we even saved out the shiny gift bags and the paperboard boxes. I hate wrapping, and I hate throwing it away. So, I like furoshiki. For some really beautiful pics and a chance to practice your Japanese…http://www.kakefuda.co.jp/

All this year, I have been shopping thrift stores for silk scarves- ARC in my town sells them for a dollar, and sometimes has them half off. The tricky part is finding scarves for boy presents, but bandanas or animal prints are surprisingly common. I guess I’m surprised because I don’t wear zebra print scarves, but they are all over the thrift stores.
My other idea has been to sew gift bags. I have made my daughter a big pink drawstring bag and a couple of smaller bags out of a pink skirt I got at ARC. $2 and I will use them for every gift occasion until they wear out.(picture) Before my son’s birthday, I’ll make him a couple of bags as well.
My goal is to have no paper wrapping at Christmas for my immediate family. Anyone join me in a no-paper holiday?

Next Newer Entries