From lowly origins great things spring...

So style-riffic! And made from cardboard toilet paper tubes, no less!

Found at A Little Hut and Photo JoJo.

More uses for them bottles of plastic

This house was built in Honduras out of 8 thousand plastic bottles filled with mud and bound together with cement. My gosh I am feeling such an itch to make a structure of some sort like this, at least a teeny tiny one, it almost feels like a no-brainer, but I do have a fear of botching it and creating a horrendous eye sore of some sort in my backyard. But I probably will take a stab at it one of these days.

This next one was built by a math professor in Serbia out of 13,500 plastic bottles and just a little cement! I think we may have stumbled upon the new brick. AND they're all over the place. AND they're free! Forget Home Depot. Go clean up the creek, and build a house out of what you find. It's the wave of the future.






A Solar Powered Toy Car (Handmade) - video powered by Metacafe


All this I found on Ecoble.

Eco-crafts at The Long Thread

In honor of Earth Day, The Long Thread had a whole bunch of tutorials about crafting green and re-using materials to get crafty and all that, and they're REALLY fantastic and inspiring. Find them here and here.

I feel kind of like a heel, just collecting these little tidbits off of other blogs. I need to get back to doing some inventing and building my own self. In the meantime, I'll collect here at Mungo only the absolute best for your reusing pleasure. Nothing like this. Blech.

Reusing is great and everything, and plastic bags are ubiquitous, but come on now people. That's revolting.

For your mailing envelope pleasure

I thought this was rather brilliant. I am loathe to buy mailing envelopes but I'm also not very good at saving ones I've received and squirreling them away... better just to make them on an as-needed basis. And with the ubiquitous brown paper bag, no less.

Found at Crafting a Greener World.

As if living in Hawaii wasn't awesome enough....

...they went and built a funky house out of all scraps and findings.

This woman inherited some land from her father in Hawaii, but didn't have much money to invest on building a house.... $500!!!!!! That is so inspiring. Let nothing stop you from building the house of your dreams, people, that's even way less than the houses of Dan Phillips.

I know it's a little small to see clearly, but one main wall is made from wine bottles set in concrete, the steps are made from old windsurf boards, and the crowning eclectic touch is that their bed is in the flatbed of an old pickup truck.

Brilliant. If you inherit land in Hawaii, let nothing stop you from moving there pronto.

This from the pages of Dwell magazine, house built by Chelsea and Bill Kohl.

airplane reuse

Don't chuck that old aircraft! There's plenty of life in the little lady yet.

what to do with those darn sody pop bottles?

Why build a house of course!

They built this in Brazil, more about it here.

And of course there's plenty to object to that these exist at all in such vast quantities... check out this trailer of a doc about the odious bottled water industry.

Moses and the boats

My cousin-in-law (not sure if that's a thing... the cousin of my husband?) is asking for donations to get him to Slovenia to continue a project started in upstate New York, building amazing art boats out of reclaimed materials. They were featured in the New York Times, so I'll treat you with some dazzling pictures and then maybe you'll consider frontin' Mosey some money. The letter and info to be found below.

By the by, Moses was with my husband Matt at the party where we met. Actually I started talking to Moses first... he's a cool guy... last seen by me at Maker Faire manning the Life-Size Mousetrap.

Hello,

It's Moses Grubb writing from San Francisco. I hope all is well with you. Here's some news.

Last year I made some major improvements in my life. I've

quit drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. I have entered into a

relationship with a woman I love deeply and become a stepfather to an incredible kid named Lucky. With love and family I quit drinking without AA. I am very happy and these changes have led to some exciting things.

Here are some pictures of me, Spy, and Lucky.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/actyvo/3331820267/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/themonster/2881944187/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/themonster/2882686736/in/photostream/

Last year I worked in New York on an art project

called "Swimming Cities of the Switchback Sea" which the New York
times called "part floating artwork, part performance, part mobile
utopia." 50 friends consisting of artists, carpenters,
musicians, filmmakers, and seafarers built several boats out of scrap
and recycled junk. We then voyaged 180 miles on the Hudson River

performing a show with the boats as the stage ending in New York City
where we displayed them as part of a greater gallery show of the

artist SWOON at Deitch Projects. You can read more about the project
in this New York Times article and slideshow:

NY Times Article: http://tinyurl.com/5swnka
NY Times Slideshow: http://tinyurl.com/cmuos5

It was an amazing experience that really helped me grow in my craft
and as an artist. We also had a lot of fun and made the people smile.

With the skills I learned growing up in Austin,

I continue my career as a carpenter / builder in
San Francisco and Oakland. Here I started working with artists on

interactive sculpture and performance. Following the successes of last year, I was honored to be invited to participate in the "Swimming Cities of

Serenissima." Reassembling two boats from the Hudson and constructing

a new one on Slovenia's tiny coast near Croatia, we will navigate the

Adriatic Sea into Italy building art and developing a performance
along the way. We will arrive in Venice parading the canals and

sharing our art during la Biennale di Venezia, an annual,
international avant-garde and contemporary arts events. It's a dream.

I was ready to start this new adventure when, just days before leaving I got a surprise

additional bill at home of $3200. At the same time, I was forced to settle a shocking debt from

parking tickets. I postponed my trip. I took some odd jobs. We had a benefit in

which our friends showed amazing support, but we

still fell short. I need to raise $4000 in order to
participate in this project. I am asking everyone I know and even reaching out to
strangers in the hopes that we can put the money together. I know
times are tough, but anything you might be able to donate to our
efforts in this project would be an amazing gift.

You can donate over the Internet by doing the following

1. Go to Paypal: http://www.paypal.com
2. Create an account if you don't already have one (this won't take long)
3. Send donations to mosesandspy@gmail.com

Thanks for reading this and for all your support over the years.

With love,
Moses

For the color-impaired among you...

... that's how I always feel. It's always so hard for me to pick out colors for walls... I've made some really horrendous goof-ups in my time. Anyway, this isn't really Mungo but here you go: Upload an image to generate a color palette based on the image's primary colors.

What to do with inkless PENS?

This is a really cool repurposing idea for an old Bic pen found here. I'm bummed however that it's something you need to buy, not instructions on how to do it yourself. I'm definitely wasteful in the pen department... I'm too scatterbrained to keep tabs on a nice refillable fountain pen, and I have a rabid predilection for nice inky rollerball pens. I love to write and I can't stand to write with anything but them. Does anyone have a solution for me... either a reuse suggestion for my abandoned empties OR a way to refill the cheapies OR a new writing instrument altogether?? I'm waiting here with baited breath.