Hand Painted Wedding Thank You Gifts

My wedding was very green (as in eco-friendly, but green was also my wedding color!)  Every aspect of the wedding was repurposed, upcycled, eco-friendly and handmade by my mom and me.  


I wanted to make special thank you gifts for the people who were special helpers.  I wanted to make scrabble tile pendants and tie tacks.  


The way I usually personalize my scrabble tile pendants is with paper.  I looked and looked for just the right image.  I couldn't find what I wanted.


For my invitations, lavender bags, programs, thank you cards and signs, I hand painted trees.  (So many trees......)  I got over my fear of painting.


So, I decided that I would try painting scrabble tiles to match everything else in my wedding.  


I love how they turned out.  They are so "me" I wasn't sure how much the recipients would like them.  Turns out, they loved them. 


This really has opened up more possibilities for me for scrabble tile pendants!  Expect to see hand painted scrabble tile pendants for sale in the near future!

These are the tie tacks.


Would any of the men out there be interested in scrabble tile tie tacks?  Should I add them to my offerings?

Snow!

This was the scene outside of my apartment last night.

I love snow on trees.  I love undisturbed snow.  Really, I think snow is beautiful unless I have to be somewhere.  Then, I really despise snow.

My Blog is Carbon Neutral

A few weeks ago, I received an email from someone working for an initiative called "Make it green!"   Their goal is to reduce carbon footprints by raising awareness of the severe environmental damage caused by carbon emissions. 

A blog with 15,000 visits a month has a yearly carbon dioxide emissions of 8lb. To neutralize these emissions they created "My blog is carbon neutral" buttons so bloggers can demonstrate that they care about the environment and the carbon footprint of their blogs.  So, I write this blog, they plant a tree and now I'm carbon neutral here on my blog!

The trees are being planted in the Plumas National Forest in Northern California, where so many wildfires have destroyed the trees.

If you would like to join me in making your blog carbon neutral and having a tree planted, you can find out the information to participate on this website. 

(The company doing this is a Germany based company called kaufDA, which provides advertisement brochures of local stores online to help consumers search for specific products and find good deals in their neighborhood. This reduces the amount of brochures printed and so the project helps the environment by reducing unnecessary paper in mailboxes. An American on average receives 41 pounds of junk mail per year. This has the same carbon footprint as burning six gallons of gasoline.)

Inspiration from Nature

I think a lot of creative people say that they draw their inspiration from nature. But what does that mean specifically?

For me, it's a couple of things:

1. Most importantly, it means that I love our planet! I love the plants and trees. I like it the way it is or I don't want it to get even worse. I think we can clean it up, but I think we need to first do no additional harm to it. So, I am generally inspired to create things that cause no further harm to the earth. Additionally, I like to save ordinary things that are no longer useful to people to make them cool and pretty and useful again. (And to keep them out of the dump.) I like that when you wear pieces that someone made from recycled items, it can raise awareness to the possibilities of rethinking what we do with items. (Think about reusing before you chuck stuff!) It can start a conversation.

2. Colors of nature. Maybe this is what most people mean when saying they are inspired by nature. We cannot make anything more beautiful than what our earth already provides, in my opinion. The colors of each season are gorgeous.

Now, I am pretty open about my hatred of winter. This is mainly because I hate being cold and there isn't enough light in the day. I also love flowers and the growth of green. And it's either snowing (and I feel bound to the house) or it's dreary in winter.

However, this past weekend when my boyfriend and I were on one of our road trips it occurred to me that winter is beautiful, too, even without snow.

Did you ever notice how gorgeous the sky is in winter? And the bare trees are so pretty against the blue. I love brown and blue together.

I am going to try to really appreciate each season for what it offers and the beautiful colors it offers, instead of trying to just "get through" all my least favorite seasons (autumn and winter) to get to my favorites (spring and summer).