Loreto 6th form college!

I got in touch with MYVP and told them about the things I did...and well they asked if I could make friendship bracelets. I used to make them ALL the time when I was a teenager and decided to check if I still could...

and I could, so went in initially to do 3 sessions with the students on their lunch break, we made friendship bracelets and talked about where we liked to shop, and why it was so important to look after our planet.

It was also really therapeutic and nice to chill out and make interesting things.

They enjoyed our sessions so much they asked me to stay until the summer holidays! I loved it!

I couldn't believe how creative they all were and they just got straight in! It made me so proud to see them enjoying making the things I suggested, some of them completely surpassed me at making friendship bracelets I was astounded!

We also looked at alternative ways of creating the friendship bracelets...i.e. stretched up strips of tee shirt fabric! They looked great (I'll get some photo's up soon)

We made button bracelets, corsages, brooches, necklaces, junkmail beads and also thanks to Danielle Lowy ar Rubbish Revamped (http://www.rubbishrevamped.org.uk/) we made gorgeous recycled boxes out of old greetings cards and postcards!

I loved it and so did they!

Some more of those tee shirt corsages.

One of them I've attached to a stretchy old sequinned belt and it looks brilliant as a 1920s style head band.

Ok so here are some brooches and necklaces I've made from cutting up my old diary backs (I knew keeping them would result in using them to make something beautiful oneday!!)

Cutting the shapes into petals and then carefully stretching my old stockings over them...I love brightly coloured tights and unfortunately because they're synthetic they're one of the worst things you can put in a landfill because they take a ridiculously long time to decompose, letting off all kinds of nasty gases into our environment.

The sequins had fallen off an old top and the buttons have been inherited from my grandmother!! Or in some cases I've used broken necklaces or belts...they only thing that hasn't been from a recycled source is the brooch fasteners.

My fingers were really hurting by the time I'd made a few petals...so imagine I had been making them all day long in a terrible working environment. Making something like this really makes you appreciate the workmanship.

Did you know that it is impossible for sequins and embellishment to be sewn on UNLESS it's by hand?

It's shocking really how low prices are for beautifully embellished garments on the high street.

It really makes me think anyway...

Using an old "Don't Panic!" envelope pack and some screwed up tissue paper I made a cherry blossom tree as a birthday card for my April birthday friend, she LOVES cherry blossom, because it always arrives when it's her birthday...

I cut out the shape and decided i liked the "negative" (so to speak...i.e. the bit of paper I was going to discard)- but decided it really emphasized the tree shape!

Ah the things you can make from rubbish!

Another creation from one of the women at Minehead.

She was really impressed with how effective it was to cut circles of jersey and use the ribbons from the inside of the garments to create pretty hair bands and corsages.

Look how proud she is! She thought I was the clever one, but she was really because I just showed her one example and then she came up with this lovely yellow number!!! I love sharing creative ideas with people and was so pleased that she was so pleased with her finished product, there's nothing like making something new and beautiful out of something old and tatty!

Breathing Life into Old clothes!! That's my motto!

recycling old T-shirts t make lovely summer dresses! combining them with vintage buttons.

It's all good fun. And totally amazing how transformed old tee's can be!

This was a custom piece for a friend who has just turned 21.

The great thing with jersey fabric is it can be plaited and manipulated really easily once you've cut strips and stretched it it automatically rolls into beautiful "ropes" or strings.

I'll have to get her to model it for me, they're her shades as she has turquoise and blue hair.

Cotton is one of the most damaging crops...or it can be (unless it's organic) for the environment, so rather than throw it into a landfill to rot, why not cut it up and turn it into something new and beautiful??

It's really a pleasure to cut and sew.

The Lovely Ladies and Minehead in Withington Manchester!!

I volunteered for an eco project run my Manchester University SIFE (student run) Here we got the ladies being creative again by recycling old clothes from OXFAM into beautiful Corsages something I like to do anyway.

We removed all the ribbons from the inside of the garments and fought over the colours!

It was really good fun and the women there couldn't believe how expensive the items looks considering it was just from a pile of old clothes that nobody wanted!!