Ikea Hacks

  

Made by Gisbert Van Ginkel

Something I found few weeks ago that I wanted to share with you. There are people recycling/upcycling Ikea's products! They hack Ikea :-)
What a cool idea to gather all the projects in one website! The best project are gathered in the Ikea hack of the year !

These are my favorites, from stylish ideas to practical use:

 I'd like to send my own Ikea Hack, but first, I'll have to convince my wife to let me play with our Lack coffee tables...

Upcycling shipping pallet into a trunk (1/2)

My son, like most of the lucky kids, has a lot of toys in his room. It's a bit overwhelming. So far, we found easy solutions with Ikea:

 

But Now, I think it's time to upcycle the shipping pallets I collected recently, see my post.

My project is an old-looking trunk that is using less than 2 shipping pallets, and I will post this project in two parts, because I haven't finished it yet.

I spent 3 hours this week-end, mainly planning where each piece of wood would go because they were a bit damaged and also I had to think about very simple ways to attach everything, nothing fancy so everybody could give it a try, it's like playing Lego!

From wood selection...

...To something that looks like a trunk

I still need to attach the lid and add wood to connect the back

What I have left to do:
I have to buy hinges that will open the trunk, a good sander like this one and some white or blue wood staining to finish the trunk with an old style look.

Trick of the day:

Please don't repeat it, but you might think that using a $180 belt sander to finish an upcycling project is a bit too much. I would agree, and it's really an optional step (you might want to keep the original printing on the wood), BUT I like to test the different tools available at my tool store, and once the project will be done, I'm planning on returning it so that next time I will try a new one. That's what I like about living in the US, it's really easy to do. I have tried a lot of tools this way and sometime I keep one I really like :-)

I will post next week the final result and maybe a schematic like the one I did for the chair here, I will need my next week-end to finish it, now I announced it the pressure is on me!

The Big Picture

The Fishbone-chair making process can be seen by clicking  here

I have a lot of upcycling ideas but posting is much faster than finishing projects.
Also, upcycling is not my only hobby, I like woodwork (than can be associated with upcycling when I use shipping pallets) and also like crafting in area I'm not use to. I guess I'm pretty eclectic.

That's why today I want to post a picture I have done by combining digital picture, printing, drawing and "painting". It's hard for me to use the word "painting" because I know that real talented painters are following my blog and I wouldn't like to offense them...

I needed to hang a fun painted picture of my son in his bedroom and wanted to make it myself. I decided to "upcycle" a simple printed picture into a painted on canvas picture, I'm stretching a little bit the "upcycling" definition so this project can fit into my blog ;-)

This is the original picture and the photoshopped one using the threshold function (Image/Adjustments/Threshold):

    

How to make it:

I printed the photoshopped picture in full size. Because I don't have a full size printer to accomodate a picture bigger than letter size or A4 format. I divided the picture in many pieces and printed them, then I reconstituted the full picture.

The most difficult step is to reproduce the picture on canvas. To do it, I perforated with a fine pencil the paper and step by step, I linked all the dots to get a pretty faithful picture on canvas. The last step is painting. I had only blue ink and was lazy and too impatient to go to the store. It turned out OK with the blue color choice.

Cost:

The canvas was less than $5 from my art store (http://www.utrechtart.com/) and if you have a computer and a printer, it's a pretty cheap project.

Conclusion:

This is a fairly simple technique with endless possibilities. The original picture itself is the only limit to the technique and using the threshold function in photoshop does not give always a good picture.

Upcycled Bowls, Baskets and Lamps

"Baskets" made of cable ties and vinyl tubes.

Brian Jewett makes wonderful creations using simple material. It's simple but it's also a lot of work...

Have a look at the anemone-like basket or the cactus with its red flowers made of valve handles!

On my side, I have started to upcycle a shipping pallet to make a little bench/trunk, I'll do my best to post it as soon as I finish it, maybe next week.

Bowls made of Ticket rolls.

35mm film Bowls

Upcycling a Lego brick into a USB key

I've always wanted to try this upcycling project. If you are lazy you can also buy the already-made key from the Lego store, but where is the fun?
I had an old USB key that I salvaged and kept for the day I would find Lego bricks... Now my son is old enough to play with Lego and so am I.

How to make it

I used a needle heated on a flame to empty the brick and leave just enough space for the USB key to fit, that's the most critical part. In my case, the key sticks inside the brick just by itself, but glue might be needed in some cases.

The only thing I don't have is a thin piece of Lego to close the bottom of the brick, because my son does not have any...yet. I will wait, but for now I use a regular brick.

This is other homemade USB key, I found online:

Made by Andrew

Corks

Teddy Bear 

Upcycled PET plastic

I'm not really into jewelry, but I must admit that what Gülnur Özdağlar can do is really creative and needs some obvious skills. Since 2008, she's making necklace, earrings but also brooches and buttons from plastic bottles. She also makes bowls and home decoration accessories. She's using the original color of the bottle to make these beautiful translucent creations.

Ring, necklace and brooch

Some of her work is available on Etsy and it's really affordable

My favorite bowl

How to make it?

If you want to give it a try, there's a tutorial on Instructables (posted by the artist herself) that will give you all the directions to make a bowl. Have fun!

The fused plastic bags

By Mandolyn on Etsy.com

Bag made by Bekha Worley available on etsy.com

Made by Chezlin.

It's a classic in upcycling material, and people don't stop being creative with these fused plastic bags.
The bags are fused using an iron and parchment paper on the top of the folded bags. That's the kind of project I would like to try but my sewing skills are close to none. I'll pass on this one but I love what people do and I hope to see Ipad and more computer bags made out of this technique.
Supermarket are selling shopping bags with their own fused plastic bags like Target with the help of the upcycling and recycling company Terracycle.

Interesting story:
By recycling the front cover of Newsweek magazine into an enveloppe, you could send plastic bag to Terracycle and receive a coupon to get the $6 upcycled-bag from Target free, they received 35,000 enveloppes! Here is the full story.

This is a link that will show you how to fuse the bags, click Here.

The Bic Daisy Vase

Would you guess that this cute little vase is made from a Bic pen?
The daisy vases are hand blown and molded by designers Jim termeer and Jess Giffin.
It's probably not easy to make, specially to get a perfectly stable vase, but I'll have to give it a try one day!

Upcycled art

I wanted to start posting some of the cool things that could be made with recycled material and that do not have any functional purpose beside being a piece of art.
Doing art using recycled material is also part of the upcycling definition.

You know the definition?
"Upcycling is the process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of better quality or a higher environmental value."


Starting with the most basic set up: a piece of garbage that a clever set-up and a lighting effect turn into art from Tim Noble & Sue webster.

Dirty White Trash (1998)

Sunset over Manhattan (2003)

He/She (2004)

Or Toby Fraley who's making awesome Robots and lamps from vintage object.

They are great source of inspiration to me, I'll try to add more art in my future posts, don't hesitate to send me cool links to upcycleus@gmail.com if you have some.

Transforming an old Mac G4 adapter into a desk clock

I've found an "old" adapter that is supposed to adapt DVI to ADC. It was still wrapped with the protection film that usually comes with Apple new products.

The Tools

  


The Material

How to make it

  

The most difficult part is to empty it because most of old Apple product, and specifically adapter, are not supposed to be fixed or opened. There's no rule to empty the adapter. Just use your imagination and a screw driver without breaking the shell. Then using the drill, just use the drill with tiny bits (and progressively increase the size of the bit until you get the right size), make a hole in the apple logo to fit the clock mechanism.

Conclusion

This is a cheap project, the clock mechanism can be taken from an old clock or does not cost more than $3. You can also buy a $1 clock from Ikea and take the mechanism. I would prefer to use thinner hands, they are a bit too thick and are hiding the apple logo to0 much. That's all I had in stock this week end.

Slot Chair

In the same spirit of the cardboard chair, few years ago, I designed a chair very similar to that one, but my design had some sturdiness issues, specifically at the base of the back. Rawstudio has reinforced the back using a clever design and for £195 pounds this chair or this bench can be yours!