Earth Day: Make a Difference

Suse am 22. April 2009

green is beautiful

Yes, the issues the Earth Day brings to our minds are not nice and easy ones – and people tend to avoid them. Some argue that environmentalist are overreacting, some argue that there is no global warming at all, some react fatalistic and think that it’s too late anyway and there is nothing left to do to avoid the disaster.

But there are also many, many people who found their own way to make a difference. And as this is a crafting blog – I’ll show some crafters and designers who make a difference:

It’s not going to change the world – but it still makes a difference when you start to use eco fabrics or/and recycled materials and buy eco friendly toys.

Oh, and here is my favorite Earth Day idea: The Eco-friendly umbrella :-)

RevoluzZza for Nature

Suse am 18. April 2009

Already last year during the Fashion Week Berlin I got a request if I maybe could make some „Eco Dolls“ – dolls made from organic and fair trade  fabrics.
Of course I really liked the idea as this fits very good  to my philosophy of anti-mass-production-toys.

Unfortunately there are not so very many pretty organic and fair trade fabrics – but at Volksfaden I found some and I made this little doll which is a perfect gift for the parents of a newborn:

eco_doll_mira

So this little doll is made out of organic fabric and the felt I used for the face and the hair is a special recyling felt made out of 100% post-consumer recycled plastic bottles. And in her tummy she has a rattle to provide some fun for the baby – and this rattle I took from an little stuffed animal my daughter destroyed some time ago. A recycled rattle.

Which brings me to the next issue concerning a sustainable way to produce toys: Recycling. Some other plush designers already take second-hand fabrics and use them to produce their creations (like Hasenpfeffer f.e.)

The other Eco Doll I made is this cute little Pikatti girl Nini:

nini

She is made out of second-hand fabric (in her first life she was a pillowcase I bought on a flee market already some time ago), face and hair again made out of recycled plastic bottles felt and her body is filled with lamb’s wool doll wadding.

Those two are the first ones – but many other RevoluzZza creatures will follow to be made from organic and fair trade fabrics or/and second-hand fabrics.

Pikatto, pikattu, pikatta… Pikatti!

Suse am 11. April 2009

Sometimes the best things just happen accidentally – and things like scribbling around a bit while you are doing something else – talking on the phone for example – is a really good thing because your consiousness isn’t judging the thing you are scribbling and telling you „Oh, that looks weird, stop that“. Almost a little bit like the Surrealists did their écriture automatique (I had to give a presentation about this issue while studying Fine Arts and I found it absolutely fascinating).

And so I was recently talking in the phone, scribbling and finally found something on my paper I really liked (these two creatures are only two details of a piece of paper that was filled with a lot of stuff):

pikatti_small

And those two look somehow different than the rest of my creatures (to me – maybe not from a more distant point of view from someone else) that I thought I really should try to make something with them. Somehow they gave me a feeling of little creatures who live far in the north, maybe in Iceland or Lapland. Somewhere I found the Inuit word Pikatti which means „companion“. And I think that fits perfectly to these little creatures.

pikatti_small

My daughter has a little friend who is a very, very cute little girl, absolutely adorable – but she hardly ever smiles and has such a special character. And although she is such a little girl – you better don’t mess with her because she can get pretty angry :-)

I thought of her when I made the first little Pikatti girl: Nana

nana