"Tempis Fugit" - mixed media collage

100% hunted and gathered materials. Too bad you can't read the text--it says "Time is given wings".

Kindred Spirits: SCAVENGING makes credit card jewelry!

I'm so excited to find another amazing blog, Scavenging--now here are people most definitely cut out of the same recycled and upcycled cloth as the Crafty Bag Lady! I absolutely loved their ideas on transforming credit cards into a funky, fun jewelry. Click here for the tutorial on making the bracelet shown above. As soon as I can get hold of a drill, I'm so making these!

Really now, is there a good excuse for just tossing stuff out???

Reclamation Arts and Nifty Thrifties

The Welcome mat, made from repurposed big-box bags and leftover jute twine, is out for any kindred pennypinching souls who happen to be in the neighborhood looking for stuff for that next attempt at appeasing the recreative urge within.

Okay, so the mat hasn't been actually made yet...but it's there in my head, waiting for the day I get all jazzed up enough to actually make it. And I will, I promise...I will! In the meantime, for your amusement, here's one of the best I've ever seen:



I'll be blogging my scrips 'n' scraps, thisses and thats, throwaway treasures rescued from underfoot and out of recycle boxes, and the dazzling (or at least, hopefully, pleasant) goodies that result from my efforts to reclaim the world. Or on behalf of the world. Or in spite of the world. Or something like that.

Reclamation is the metaphor for my life. It's mercy and rebirth and renewed purpose and not being ready for the junk heap just yet. It's also common sense thriftiness, not being wasteful just because we can but rather, as my mother used to put it rather wistfully, leaving the place better than we found it.

Now before the schmaltzy Disney soundtrack is cued and little doves come twittering from the rafters with olive branches in their beaks (made from castoff silk Christmas poinsettia leaves, naturally) let me state that I have nothing against buying stuff. Buying stuff is fun, and I do so whenever the need to, the time to, and the funds to do so coincide. However, this blog is about UIUWIOMIDODW. Aside from being the world's most cumbersome acronym, it also shortcuts the old-timey gem that serves as my life motto:

"Use it up
Wear it out
Make it do
Or do without."

Being thrifty not only stretches one's money, it stretches one's creativity. I love the challenge of seeing what I can create, or recreate, from what may have appeared pretty useless.

Kind of the way Father God reclaimed my own life. Yeah.