As a lover of handbags, shoes, and the environment, I can appreciate designers who make an effort to reduce waste by recycling clothes.  Both pre-consumer textile waste (by-product materials from the textile, fiber and cotton industries) and post-consumer textile waste (garments or household articles that are typically disposed of into the trash and end up in municipal landfills).

Mandinka ecofashions men’s suit coats into attractive and useful, upcycled handbags. With popular, one-of-a-kind (more…)

Remember Obama’s Hope, Progress and Change posters?  Created by controversial mixed-media artist Shepard Fairey, his latest work promotes clean renewable energy in his inimitable style.

Fairey’s hitched his easel and Power Up Windmill to moveON.org and several other organizations, hoping to “cover September in windmills.”

($20/each) @ obeygiant.com (MoveOn gave away 300,000 free stickers of the poster.)

Demo Design Clinic creates these fun-looking steampunk lamps from select, repurposed galvanized plumbing parts.

The Kozo lamps are sold at the Design2009 Etsy Shop prices range from $169 to $229.

via: recyclart.org

The Spring Screen Lounge Chair was created by Brooklyn-based designer, Susan Woods, designer in chief of Aswoon/Susan Woods Studio.  The handmade chair was created by welding a recycled, bent spring screen to a steel frame.

photo: thomas ernsing

It’s not often (like never) that you find this combo of art, home decor, street memorabilia and evidence of a crime. Empty spray paint cans originally used to create street art (graffiti) on, and around, the streets and walls of Los Angeles are now being transformed into useful and unique lamps by graffiti artist Dash 2000 Fidel.

Each lamp is said to be “trackable” to the specific art work that it was used to create, (more…)

Designer, welder and recycled metalworking visionary, Joel Hester and his Dallas-based The Weld House studio, make sweet looking tables and furniture out of the junkyard remains of old Chevy’s and Fords.

Take the roof of a battered and abused blue van and repurpose it into a striking creation like the 9′ conference table (above right), or transform the weathered hood of a 64 Ford Galaxy into two side tables (below right) that would make even the most (more…)

My little girl is still figuring out the mechanics of sitting upright, but I can hardly wait for the day when we can splash finger paints with wild abandon, glue together crazy collages, knead play dough into malformed critters, and conduct other random acts of craftiness. And when she finally realizes that fingers don’t belong jammed in her mouth and glazed with saliva, it’s reassuring to know that safe, nontoxic, and environmentally friendly art supplies are only a click away.

Founded by art educators,  Clementine Art is known for its beautifully packaged, certified-non-toxic art kits, which are chockfull of all-natural and organic products made from plant and mineral sources. More important, however, they’re (more…)

Artist, designer Johnny Swing (I guess with that nome de plume he’s obviously a man with a plan), repurposes mundane or common objects into thought provoking visual stimuli.  Mr. Swing’s Nickel Couch (above) consists of 7,000 nickels and 35,000 welds, all supported by a superstructure worthy of Architectural Digest.  His furniture, objects and lighting pieces are nothing if not thought provoking.

Scraps of Italian leather floor tiles and dozens of jars comprise the pieces of the Leather Disc Furniture series (above).

Crouching Table (above) transforms the utilitarian wheelbarrow into a designer table with interior storage space for knick knacks or perhaps a koi aquarium.

Supply your own metaphor for porky.

Want to add a little pizazz to your garden after the sun goes down?  These multi-colored, handblown glass garden globes have a solar collector at the bottom of each brushed steel mounting stake that makes them vibrant beacons after dark.

The 5″ globes come in Nectar and Trilogy (2 color variatons) variations – $46 ea. @ allsop home & garden

A rescued car wreck from his cousin’s lawn was the raw material from which artist and MIT grad, Matthew Day Jackson, created a work of art.  The reconstituted vehicle seems to hover and float on a spectrum of sequenced fluorescent lights powered by roof-mounted solar panels.  The work entitled, “Chariot II-I Iike America and America likes me,” is part of Jackson’s one man show, “The Immeasurable Distance,” at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center.  The solar array was designed by members of MIT’s Systems Engineering Group.

photo credit / MIT List Visual Arts Center