In honor of Earth Day this year, Anthropologie collected corks for use in their store window displays. As someone who has been saving corks from my wine bottles for years now, my interest was piqued. I haven’t yet decided what to do with my collection, but now I’ve collected some great inspiration! Of course, it takes time to collect enough corks to make much of anything, and now my collection of dozens (maybe a couple hundred?) looks tiny compared to some of these large scale cork projects. So, I doubt I’ll be making a Corkxedo (yes, really, a tuxedo made of corks) anytime soon!
After Anthropologie breaks down their cork window displays, the corks will go to Cork ReHarvest where they will go on to become fishing bobs, brand-new flooring, paper pulp and more.
Cork is a green resource and is 100% natural, renewable, recyclable and biodegradable. “Trees are not cut down to harvest cork, rather, the bark is harvested by hand every 9 years. Cork oak trees can live up to 300 years, so they are very sustainable resource! Approximately 6.6 million acres of Mediterranean cork forest extend across Portugal, Spain, Algeria, Morocco, Italy, Tunisia and France. These oak forests support one of the world’s highest levels of forest biodiversity, second only to the Amazonian Rainforest.” -Cork ReHarvest Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve long been intrigued by the visual geometry of mechanical components and have gravitated towards Neo-Victorian style and yesteryear’s machinery as well as the contrast of modern industrialization for as long as I can remember. I was into Steampunk style long before I heard the term (and posted about it) three years ago. During my college years in Charleston, SC. I was surrounded by historic architecture and objects dating from Victorian times to the Colonial Era; these days I am surrounded by Victorian mining history in the CO mountains.
Gears are a common motif in the world of Steampunk; people are using gears and cogs that are usually salvaged from clocks, watches, bikes, and machines as well as representations of gears in a variety of projects. The following examples just begin to scratch a little rust off the surface.
Being a bit of a music nut, I love these – four of the many funky steampunk guitars as well as some crazy guns as featured on WebUrbanist.
Make your own gear switchplate covers by following a tutorial at the Steampunk Workshop.
This flash drive is a stunning assemblage of tiny watch parts.
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The word “Assemblage“ has caught my creative focus this evening. Assemblage is an artistic process in which a three-dimensional artistic composition is made from putting together found objects. -Wikipedia
I’ve always loved to make collages, and I collect small odds and ends with the intention of one day using them in some sort of assemblage. Trouble is, I haven’t spent enough time creating. The good news is that I’ve got some pretty great collections started, so I have some inspiring materials to draw from! Both my fabric clothing label collection and my selvedge edge collection will no doubt be appearing once I have some free time to create…right now I’m so busy sewing in many moments of what used to be spare time that this blog post is the closest I’ve made it to creating something new. (unless you count that I’ve made a suit jacket and vest already this week…but that’s still in the work category.)
This is WAY cool: This Sewing Queen Marionette Assemblage by Jeanne Rhea was made from old sewing machine parts, old spools, mirror, silk, box, notions, bobbins and other found objects.
I can see a doing a regular feature on assemblage artists…these are just a few with the sewing bird theme for starters…
Check out the details in this “Hen” by whileshenaps on Etsy….I love the fabric measuring tape trim and the intricately wrapped wire and fabric legs. What a great use for fabric scraps!
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