Upycled Tumbler Glases
Are you a hippie, a hipster or an eco nut job?
What exactly is upcycling and how does it effect the earth? And Yes... caring about this article just make you a hippie. Upcycling as defined by Wikipedia is " the process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of better quality or for better environmental value."
This sounds like it's a pretty simple principal right? Wait... I have upcycled before... except we just called it reusing it or refinishing it.. or repurposing it. Example... I had A t shirt that I loved and it was getting all ratty and not cute looking anymore. So what did I do? Well, I first of all did not do anything. I called my mom, and was like, "Mom!!! I need help! My favorite t shirt is in tatters and I want to preserve all my memories from this beautiful t shirt that you bought me." Ok I laid it on pretty thick, and she didn't even buy the t shirt from me, but my mom is a sucker for her kids.
So I grabbed a bunch of t shirts from my college days as well as a few of my husbands shirts that he had great memories of and we had my mom create a quilt that had all of our t shirts sewn on. The result of this amazing feat of sewing prowess (which I do not possess) was a beautiful quilt from all of our favorite t shirts from the first 7 years of our marriage. We had some really cool unique shirts that we got on vacations from Florida, Utah, some from Aruba and all over the place.
We were not quite ready to give up on the shirts, but knew that if we kept wearing them that we would look like vagabonds. My husbands were especially bad with holes in the shirts. Ok... so example one done! We have done repurposing or "upcycling" at least one time.. Ok ok, I get it my mom did upcycling... Geez! But we still use it, and saved the shirts from the dump so yes- we are super hero eco-concious people.
Have you seen videos of people making glasses out of old discarded liquor, wine and beer bottles? Yeah, I've seen them too. I tried the DIY
Version where you cut your own wine bottles. So I bought a glass cutting kit and decided to drink a bottle down, for you know- research. The first effort was pretty much a fail. I dropped the bottle once I had it cut, broke the bottle and cut my thumb while picking up the shards. Undaunted I called my friend over and we decided to do more research. Later we cut the next bottle perfectly and it was a success, I now had 1 of 3 wine bottles cut that I needed to make our pendant lighting for our new bar.
There are many different things that you can upcycle, repurpose or up convert- whatever the hipsters are using as lingo these days. A few years ago, we were cutting edge apparently, my husband grabbed an old end table that his parents were going to throw away. It had been put through the ringer by he and his friends over the years while he was growing up. It was put through the drywall one New Years Eve, hosted mini beer pong sessions in college and in general had just taken abuse.
It was however, solid oak. Not pressed cardboard and scraps of wood that you buy from big box furniture brands today. So he sanded it down, replaced the outdated handles, put a modern stain on it and now it looks amazing and gets used every day in our new house.
Hopefully you learned what upcycling is and that people in the industry just like to reuse terms and make them cool as much as we like to reuse physical things and make them cool!
So Steve, if you ever read this, I would like these for my birthday in 3 weeks ok? Sounds good! Oh yes, if you read this article all the way to the end that most definitely makes you a hippie.
Special Thanks to blumarble for letting us use the images.
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