Sunday, 12 February 2012

We Love Upcycling

We all know it's good to recycle, but we think it's even better to upcycle. Upcycling is all about taking things that would have gone into the rubbish, or the recycling, and giving them a new lease of life. It can be fun to look at things before you throw them out and see if there's another way of using them, and there are plenty of ideas on the internet to inspire you. So with Valentine's Day approaching - we thought it was time to show our love of upcycling with a pixie twist. So here's an idea for an upcycled faery wand complete with a ribbon of hearts for a little Valentine's day magic.

Make Your Own Faery Wand


You will need - scrap paper, an empty plastic milk bottle, a coloured plastic bag, a garden cane or drinking straw, scissors and glue dots.

First cut the flat areas from the milk bottle. Then draw 2 different sized hearts on the scrap paper and cut them out. You need to make sure that the largest of these is no bigger than the largest of the pieces of plastic you have already cut.


Using the paper templates, cut 2 large hearts and 5 small ones out of the plastic bottle. Then cut 2 more small hearts out of the coloured plastic bag.

Layer three hearts together so you have the largest one on the bottom, then the coloured heart and the smaller milk bottle heart on top. Staple them together and bend the smallest heart in a little. Repeat this stage so you have 2 matching layers. Then staple the two layers together leaving a small gap in the centre for the cane to go through.


Cut a 2cm wide strip from the plastic bag and twist this around the cane fixing it at either end with a glue dot. Push the cane into the piece you have already made.

Cut another strip from the bag and attach the 3 remaining hearts. Tie one end onto the cane just below the layered hearts. Allow the other end to hang loose.

You are ready to make a little upcycled Valentine's magic of your own.

Wednesday, 1 February 2012

Frosty Weather for Frogs


In our last blog we were talking about how spring seemed to have come early this year, infact we had Primroses in January! Then a couple of days ago we spotted another sure sign of Spring - frogspawn! However since this first appeared in the pond the weather has turned much, much colder and some of the frogspawn has become trapped in ice. It was worrying to see and, though we hope that some will survive, it did get us thinking how vulnerable frogs are. So here are a few tips we'd like to share to help them as much as we can.

1. Keep your eyes open when out in the car in wet weather, lots of frogs are killed on the roads.
2. Build a garden pond but don't add goldfish as they will eat frogspawn and tadpoles.
3. If you aren't able to make a pond - make a compost heap. Frogs spend most of their life on land and they love to hide in compost heaps.
4. Make a frog-house from stones or an old flower pot and tuck it away in a damp corner of your garden. This will give any frogs that visit your garden a place to hide from cats.
5. Make a log pile or a rockery.
6. Try to resist the temptation to keep tadpoles in jars. Unless you happen to have found them in a puddle, or other very shallow water which might easily dry out, they are better left where they are.
7. Take care when mowing the lawn!
8. Allocate an area of your garden as a wildlife area - and try to resist the temptation to peek!

As we saw today, frogs are vulnerable! Let's give them all the help we can.