Party Tips: Recyling

 

Creative Commons License photo credit: garryknight

Recycling and composting at parties can be a real challenge. Have you ever stood in someone's kitchen at party unsure of what to do with the plastic plate, food scraps and pop can in your hand?

RecycleScene has some great tips:

• Choose items that are easily recyclable. Serve drinks in cans rather than styrofoam cups. 

• Put out easily identifiable bins where guests can see them. Blue for recycling, green for food waste, black for garbage. Guests are more likely to recycle or compost if the bins are accessible.

• Compost food scraps. In Ontario, most of us have green bins so this is really easy.

• Use Cloth napkins and real dishes. You can rent the dishes for a large party. If that doesn't suit you, look for biodegrable tableware made from sugarcane or wheat fibers. If you must use paper products, look for post-consumer recycled fibers. And don't forget that napkins can go into the green bin!

• Re-use decorations from other parties or make decorations out of other materials, such as a pinata. Invset some time in making non-specific festive decorations such as felt pennets or banners, a generic "party" sign that can be used for any party over and over again. I love the idea of the wooden sign in the image above. Why not try your hand at a diy project?

Green Parties & Weddings

Image source: http://www.greenlivingonline.com

Here's a great source for tips to green up your next party or weddding: Green Living Online
Sign up for newsletters sent to your email inbox for great tips.

Some great suggestions to help make events more ecofriendly:

• use biodegradable plates and utensils (usually made from corn)
• look for 100% recycled paper products and make sure to recycle/compost them
• green up your lootbags/guest favours-use a re-usable, biodegradable bag or container

The site also lists suggestions for loot bag filler such as organic lollipops or candy, smencils (smelly pencil crayons made from recycled newspaper), small toys from Plan Toys. For the container itself, here are some ideas I like-a cloth lunch bag, a pencil case, a sand bucket, a photo box/keepsake box. Try to find something that can be re-purposed.

I find ecofriendly toys to be a bit expensive, so pick one or two really great items.

For weddings: there are tips on every category from the ring to the honeymoon. You can find the wedding article here 
My suggestions:

• serve organic, free range or local menu items
• use items for centerpieces that can be re-used or re purposed
• use flowers that are in season
• buy a second hand dress, one from a charity shop or at least re-sell yours when you are done
• consider renting dresses (brides or bridesmaids)
• look for guest favours that are practical, organic or donate to a charity in your guest's name
• consider paring down your guest list-reduce your carbon footprint and save money at the same time

Hope you find these tips helpful, check out Green Living for more great suggestions.

Sweet Pea Banner and Garland

This project is super adaptable and actually really easy. The same method can be used for any garland in any colour, for any season or holiday.

Materials:

• card stock (2-3 colours)
• string of some kind ( I used embroidery floss)
• letters-can be stickers, scrapbooking or cut out your own
• gluestick
• sewing needle
• circle cutter-not necessary but highly recommended
  

To make the banner-first figure out how many letters you need to spell your word. I used 8, and added 3 extra as spacers. I decided on 2 3/4 inch circles-big enough to see clearly but not so big to use up too much card stock.

I used the teal green colour for the background colour, and the kelly green for the letters and the accents. As you can see from the picture, I cut out 8 circles from the teal cardstock, and 3 circles from the kelly cardstock.

I drew the letters freehand-they are about 2 inches high on the kelly and cut them out with scissors. Feel free to use a template, stickers or die cuts if you are not comfortable drawing freehand.

Glue the letters to the circles. I find a glue stick is best. Liquid glue tends to wrinkle the paper when it dries.

To attach the circles together, I punched a hole with a sewing needle on each of the circle, making sure the holes lined up in a row, then I strung the circles onto the embroidery floss.

For the garland, I used 1 1/4 inch circles in three colours: the same teal and kelly green, and added a third colour-a sage green. I also punched a hole in each side of the circle and strung with embroidery floss. The hardest part of both these items is cutting out the circles. If you have a circle cutter, it is much faster and easier. The nice part of these garland is that they fold up nicely into a stack which is easy to transport and store and doesn't tangle.

Felt Sweet Pea Name Tags/Magnets

Materials:

• Green felt (made from recycled bottles)
• Pompoms
• Embroidery floss and needle
• Glue gun and glue sticks
• Craft magnets

To make the peas-I folded a sheet of bright green felt, and cut a crescent moon shape retaining the folded edge. I did this to save myself time sewing. I made 26 peas total, I only used one sheet of felt for the whole project. Once I had all the shapes cut out from the felt, I stitched up the sides and a little bit along the top. This forms a sort of basket shape. I hot glued 2 or 3 pom poms into each. I flipped them over and hot glued a small piece of magnet to the back-so the guests could take them home and use them as a fridge magnet.

This project started as a party favour, but at the last minute was transformed into both a favour and name tags for the guests. Shortly before the baby shower, one of the guests mentioned to me she really didn't know most of the people attending and that she was really bad with names. So rather than buy paper name tags that would be thrown out at the end of the party I added names to the peas I already made.

I typed up all the names of the guests, printed them out and cut them into little rectangles. I attached the names to the felt with a small piece of double sided tape. I made sure the tape came off cleanly. As a final touch, I added a safety pin. Guests wore them at the party, it was a cute way to add to the sweet pea theme.

Sweet Pea Mobile

Materials:

• card stock in your choice of colours ( 3 colours look best)
  
• fishing line or clear jewelry thread
• fishing weights or beads
  
• something circular for the top
  

The first project I started was a mobile. The inspiration came from Ohdeedoh. I saw this mobile on their site:

http://www.ohdeedoh.com/ohdeedoh/make-a-plexiglass-top-for-a-diy-mobilehow-to-138193

The article is really about the plexiglass top, but I loved the three tones and the circles. Because if you think about it, peas really are circles, aren't they? So, circles became the starting point. I repeated the circle theme in the other decorations, including the polka dot balloons.

I really recommend getting a circle cutter, if you want to try to make a mobile like this. It will save oodles of time and painstakingly cutting out circle after circle. I got one a Michael's, I had a 40% off coupon. Bonus! Circle cutters look something like this:

Martha Stewart Circle Cutter

I didn't get this exact one, but they all basically work the same. One tip I discovered, it is helpful to tape the edges of the paper down to the cutting matt, otherwise the paper may slip and you won't get a perfect circle. I picked up 3 colours of card stock: kelly green, teal green and sage green. Card stock was on sale 5 sheets for $2 so I had more than enough paper for this project. I did a few tests on a scrap piece of paper first, and I decided 1 1/4 inch circles was the perfect diameter. I cut out lots and lots of each colour, I don't know how many exactly but I do know I used 48 circles in total. There are 6 strands and each strand has eight circles. For the top, I used a needle working circle. It was 89 cents, and it already had perfectly spaced holes. It made the whole thing alot easier.

Using a sewing needle and fishing line, I poked holes in the top and bottom of each circle and strung eight onto each strand. Don't worry if it's not perfectly even, you can adjust the spacing after. Once I had all the strands I needed, I tied them to the plastic circle top and balanced the whole thing out. I had trouble getting the strands to hang straight so I added some fishing weights to the end of each, and that solved it. They look like beads, but they aren't.

Once you are happy with the way it hangs, adjust the spacing between the circles and trim any excess fishing line. That's it! This project is very inexpensive, but it is a time commitment. I estimate I spent about $4 on this project, but I spent 3-4 hours working on it. But, considering mobiles are super expensive to buy, it makes sense to make one. There are so many options, that it is easy to personalize this project to your taste and colour scheme.