upcycle

November 30, 2025: ‘Green Christmas’ stall at Merri Community Shed market

| remakiweb

I’m dreaming of a Green Christmas where we try to minimise the waste and excess of the season, but keep the fun and delight.

I’ve been madly making things from reclaimed materials that are so beautiful (yes, I am humble) that you will want to use them year after year or be proud to give them to someone you care about.

I am only doing one market this year because I’ve got a lot of other stuff on, so I am hoping to sell as much as possible this Sunday 30 November at the Merri Community Shed Market, 11am – 3pm, 19 Harding Street, Coburg.

Fabric gift bags

These are made from dust bags that come with fancy bags from a fancy brand. My wonderful friend who gave these to me has been collecting these for some time, so there are 23 of them! I covered the branding with the seasonal fabric around the bottom of the bags and made a little detachable greeting card baggie. I also replaced the original drawstrings with something sturdier and more festive, and used the cat brush to get the tassels to form on the ends 🙂

These are great to use within your family year after year, or to give to someone who would appreciate the wrapping as part of the gift and reuse them. Also good for people who don’t enjoy wrapping, scissors and last minute fights with sticky tape.

Upcycled drawstring dust bag to waste-free Christmas gift bag!

Pencil coasters and treat containers

Project Stationary do an amazing job collecting and redistributing excess stationary every year. There are always some donated items that nobody wants, which is how I came to possess a bunch of stumpy pencils!

I used resin to fix them together inside a stacked chips tube and then went to the Merri Community Shed where I had plenty of wonderful help from fellow members slicing them up to use as coasters! The bandsaw is not for the faint-of-heart. After a few messy experiments I decided it was best to place the pencil slices inside cork coasters and pour more resin to create the final product.

By chance I realised that the coasters fit absolutely perfectly as a lid for these Chris’ Foods terracotta dip containers. I think a teachers’ desk needs a special container for lollies, and this combo delivers.

Fabric tinsel

There is no better way to make use of fabric scraps than turning it in to ‘tinsel’. It’s just so pretty 🙂 I seemed to catch a bunch of viruses this Spring. Serendipitously, this coincided with a friend passing on her neighbours’ unwanted fabric stash to me. In between blowing my nose, feeling sorry for myself and watching total brainrot on the TV, I made fabric tinsel. You literally tie scraps to a bit of string, so it was the right level of intellectually demanding (ie: not).

Tie knots onto string to make fabric tinsel!

Paper Angels

Years ago I came across a book of Christmas Carols in an op shop and every year I make a batch of paper angels from it. You can follow this tutorial to make your own from any bit of paper you want. I get to use up some of my everlasting stash of second-hand buttons and beads.

Soy fish coasters

We visited the amazing Mill Market in Daylesford a little while ago where I came across these cool paper napkins. I am not normally a fan of a paper napkin but I love this design based on The Great Wave of Kanagawa, (c. 1830) a famous Japanese wood block print. I had a depressing thought about how different the ocean was in 1830 compared to now (it was lacking in floating waste plastic islands) which made me think of my collection of empty soy sauce fish gathered from the Darebin Hard Rubbish Heroes pop up shop a couple of years ago. These things banged together in my brain with the resin coasters I’ve been making and became these soy fish coasters. I added a little bit of the plastic net that garlic inexplicably comes in to set a little plastic fishing scene.

There’s some other cool stuff too, but my lap is getting hot from the laptop, so you will just have to come and see me at the market! Feel free to ask me questions or get in touch to buy something! I gotta pay for all this resin 🙂

Leave a comment

April 2025: “Mothers’ day in the bag” Remaki stall at Merri community market

| remakiweb

May the Fourth is not just Star Wars Day this year (“may the fourth be with you”); it is also Merri Community Shed Market Day. A great place to shop local for those in the Northern suburbs of Melbourne, and pick up a gift for Mother’s Day (which is the following Sunday 11 May) that supports local small businesses, makers and artists. (You know, like me :-))

An April encounter with the new strain of flu has left me shorter on time than I had planned, so I’ve been panic-crafting this week to make all the things I had in my head for this market.

But I did have a few things already mostly done, which is why this collection is called “Mother’s Day In the Bag”. A little while ago, my wonderful friend, Jo P, gifted me an amazing upholstery fabric sample book, that included a few coated versions of thick, gorgeous cotton prints. I went on a ‘bathroom bag binge’ using an elaboration on this pattern to making some zip up bags suitable for toiletries, and for setting down in wet places. The outside of the bags is made from the cotton upholstery samples, with the bottom quarter using the coated fabric, so a wet bench won’t ruin your bag.

I also lined the inside with advertising banner material which is water resistant, so nothing is getting in or out. (exploded toothpaste will not get on your clothes if you travel with this bag)

And because I can’t help myself, I added a little matching zip pull tassel handmade from some leather samples. These bags take time and care to make, but I think they look great, and they work great too.

The other thing I got inspired by was a lovely scarf gifted to me by the incredible sister who visited with her family over Easter.

I wanted to wear it more, so I turned it into an upcycled throw-on layer, similar in process to the tablecloth-to-top and scarf-to-top upcycles I have made in the past, but more suited to the cooler weather, which suits the darker colours and print.

Then I challenged myself to see if I could wear it all year round. Yes! I’m keeping it.

So what other textiles could be upcycled into winter throw-ons for an extra layer? Well, it turns out, a mohair lap blanket and a sofa throw sourced from the Sacred Heart Op Shop in Preston:

I’m going to try and make a few more to sell before this Sunday’s market.

But I got distracted by my order of candle refills from Kanuka Candles arriving. You just microwave the pack they send you, the wax melts and your pour it into whatever you want. If you’ve ever made candles you know it can be a messy business, and this made it a lot cleaner. I refilled my empty candle container then remembered the time I made tea cup candles for my kids’ school Mother’s Day Stall. So back to my second home (Vinnies Coburg) with an excuse to buy some of the super cute tea cup sets.

I superglued the cup and saucer together (because I don’t want anyone accidentally drinking out of this tea cup once the candle is burned!) and made a cute little matchy matches box. So I used up my whole candle refill order but if the teacup candles don’t sell, I’ll still have candles, and if they do sell, I can buy more refills. I also have a bunch of candles that have gotten a but dusty that I might melt down and re-pour. I don’t know if that’s a thing, but surely worth a try. Have you tried this?

And I put some info on the tags about refilling the teacup candles, so they can be used and loved into the future.

I’ll also have a few other bags and earrings and things for sale, so hopefully I will see you at 19 Harding Street Coburg, this Sunday 4 May, 2025 for the Merri Community Market.