Quotes About Upcycling

Why not collect and clean chicken wishbones in the run-up to Christmas, spray them silver and use each to pinch together a white hem-stitch napkin?

Filipinos don't wallow in what is miserable and ugly. They recycle the bad into things of beauty.

Growing up I always used to shop in Oxfam. I'd find things for 50p and then take them home, cut them up and make them into something new.

I have become quite good at repurposing and reusing much of what comes into the house. The goal is to generate as little waste as possible.

Of course there are many ways we can reuse something. We can dye it. We can cut it. We can change the buttons. Those are other ways to make it alive. But this is a new step to use anything - hats, socks, shirts. It's the first step in the process.

I get so many lovely messages and so many people tag me in their own crafting and upcycling and I love it.

I think of my art materials not as junk but as garbage. Manure, actually: it goes from being the waste material of one being to the life-source of another.

I credit my mom with inspiring in me a love of design, matched by her creative problem-solving abilities. This is a woman who could find an old, discarded piece of furniture, bring it home and turn it into something fabulous.

Out of used furniture she made a tree.

I have to make a dress out of recycled materials for my kid's preschool 'Project Runway'-like assignment. I'm currently fusing plastic bags.

You can go to any second-hand store and get an amazing piece - I have pieces from flea markets at home. You don't need to buy throwaway furniture.

I used to unwind the wire tags that labeled the crates of vegetables and took the fine brass and steel wires and braided and twisted them together to make bracelets, rings, and figures.

know there's solace in making do with what you've got, making things a little bit better. What might have been thrown out went from tattered scraps to something majestic and goofy and honest that holds together, that keeps people's eyes off me and my family, yet lets in the light and sun, like a poem or a song.

My grandma taught me how to hand-sew, so I'm always making things from hand-me-downs.

My first collection was made from sheets that my grandmother, who lived in Normandy, had been collecting for a long time. There are a lot of flea markets in that part of France, and she knew what I liked.

Everything in my house was either free or under 40 bucks, and people come to my house and can't believe that I picked up everything on the street or in a thrift shop.

We were in recycling before recycling was cool.

It's like recycling: selling old clothes to help make new ones.

They call me garbage queen at home, because I'm extremely particular about reduce, reuse and recycle.

I was always stealing 40-gallon drums off the road at night, bringing them back to the workshop and cutting them up with a gas axe because I loved to weld. I would make creatures out of these old metal drums.

I'd take garbage, and I'd glue them together and create inventions.

I repurposed an old World War II merchant ship door into one of the best coffee tables you have ever seen. I have also made little cabinets and media centers.

Why not collect and clean chicken wishbones in the run-up to Christmas, spray them silver and use each to pinch together a white hem-stitch napkin?

I was always taking garbage from around the house and making my own toys. I wasn't given a Wii or an Xbox or anything.