From trash to

I often state that dumpster diving is one of my favorite things. Saturday my next door neighbor built a new patio and sidewalk in his back yard. He brought his trailer and collected some trash from around his place, too. Here's what I saw from my front porch Sunday morning. It was like a buffet table to me. Never afraid to ask, I had my eye on some wood that I spied in his trailer on Saturday. Since I knew it was headed for the dump, I asked and my neighbor even helped me dig for some that was buried.

I actually nearly forgot to take photos of my spoils until I had already put some of the pieces away. The one sitting on my porch rail is 4 X 4 (and boy was it heavy), which I promptly chopped into manageable pieces as soon as I got it to my garage. I also cut the other lumber into more manageable lengths. The shorter ones were 8' and the longest was 10'. I'm really tickled, and will be playing with wood and beeswax or wood and paint very soon. And just think, if I hadn't asked, all this wonderful lumber would be headed for the dump this week.

After I cut up the lumber, I made an Easter card for Dana. I made the envelope from some of my painted deli paper that I love, love, love working with. I was going to use an old calendar, but couldn't make it fit the card. Sometimes it's hard to recycle materials. To save on glue, I sewed the envelope.

Speaking of glue, I wanted to comment on a point Patty made in one of her comments about Mod Podge. She pointed out that she can't use it due to humidity. I have only used it once before when making fabric paper from paper scraps and muslin, although I have seven jars of it. Don't ask where they came from, because I have no idea. My two choices for gluing the napkins to the eggs were gel medium and Mod Podge. I decided to go with the latter and save my gel medium for more worthy projects. After all, I wasn't sure anything would work on the plastic eggs, especially since gesso didn't. Although I'm not a fan of Mod Podge and would never, ever use it in my paper art projects, it seemed to work well on the eggs and didn't cause the sticky mess I feared I would have once the eggs were dry. Having said that, I plan to keep a close eye on the eggs over the next few months to make sure I haven't made an even worse mess than I have with the plastic grass and plastic eggs. Thanks Patty for pointing out the possible problem.

Now I'm not a card maker or a rubber stamper, and I only had a few minutes to whip this up. I used some left over card stock that I colored using pink and lime green dye inks. Unfortunately, you'll have to wait to see pictures of Dana accepting it. Other than that, Easter Sunday was a pretty decent trash day.

Today's blog is for all you parents and grandparents out there with children ages 5 through 19. There is a design competition for a trash to treasure invention on PBSKids.org . Kids can enter online through September 5. The competition begins today and it asks kids to recycle, reuse, or re-engineer everyday materials into an outside the box invention. If your child or grandchild is science savvy, you really need to check out this web site. There are instructions, a video showing last year's winner, and those from previous years. Even if your child is too young or old to qualify, you should check out the specifics. It's never too soon to help our young people learn environmental strategies that will engage them, and possibly change their and mankind's future.