The wanna-be artist in me was delighted when one of my nieces requested manga drawing materials for her birthday. Rather than spend money on a paper gift bag to hold her art supplies, I thought it would be more fun to put them in a cute and sturdy t-shirt bag. A while back I posted the instructions on how to make a T-Shirt Bag, but since this bag was a gift, I made the finished product nicer by adding a few steps: I “boxed” the bottom and sewed bias tape around the raw openings. After transforming a black and white “History of Art” t–shirt (leftover from my art docent days) into a bag, I tied it up with a large colorful ribbon. My talented niece now has a reusable gift bag/art tote and I’m pleased that I re-purposed another item!
#1 – Art in Clothes and Clothes in Art
Kaarina Kaikkonen: The Blue Route
Finnish environmental artist Kaarina Kaikkonen re-purposes t-shirts and other second-hand clothes with a different creative goal in mind. She creates dreamlike art installations. The power of her work lies in how she ties her message to each site of installation. Ms. Kaikkonen says of her work, “My work talks about people, how people from different backgrounds are connected together, about life as a journey.” You can see more of her work here.
#2 – Clever Kitchen Ideas
A hanger can be used for more than hanging clothes as seen by this photo. Check out these 10 Clever Kitchen Lifehacks.
#3 -Made You Smile
We can all come up with clever and creative ways to make our lives easier and more enjoyable, but how about coming up with ways to make each others’ lives happier, at least for a moment? It can start with a smile. Mark and Angel Hack Life have compiled a list called 88 Ways to Make a Stranger Smile and the first entry is “Smile often.”
#4 – Exploring Caves
Exploring caves around the world is not at the very top of my bucket list, but I can say that I’ve been to at least one of the caves featured in 23 of the World’s Most Insane Caves That You Can Explore. After looking through this series of photos of nature’s amazing creations, I am now adding visits to a few of them to my bucket list!
#5 – Creativity According to Rainn
“Everyone is creative in their own way and that, that creativity is a great thing. It’s a human thing and it needs to be nurtured and it can help us go down life’s path and help us to become deeper, richer, more satisfied human beings.”
Rainn Wilson
“If it’s a pure expression of yourself no matter what it is or what medium, it’s going to shine. It’s going to resonate. You could look inside of yourself and you could have a canvas and you could paint a dot in it, but if that is where your creative purpose is taking you then it needs to be that dot.”
Rainn Wilson
Let your creativity shine this weekend!
