Upcycling wine crates

 

  

You can upcycle wine crates at different levels. From a useful shelf to art exhibit. This is few pictures showing how versatile these wood boxes could be. And how easily you can modify them.

You can find wheels at amazon for less than $10 the set of 4! you just have to use wood screws to attach them.
When you hang crates like this, you have to make sure it's well attached to your wall, and that no kids will try to use the structure as a ladder. You better use good wood screws to attach the crate to a stud. Between the studs, use at least three butterfly anchors for each crate, they look like this, it's pretty strong:
      

Probably my favorite upcycling from ciclismo jewelery

A side table from Nicolas Maison on Etsy

A basket from the garden crate company

I'd like to end this overview with a little bit of art with australian artist Tracey Johnson who uses his jigsaw to open the crates and creates light sculptures. 

Iphone/Ipod charging dock

No new project to post yet, but I found this cool, elegant and decorative docking station that could be a future project. Old good-looking books are easy to find and it's an inexpensive project. If you are lazy or don't have enough time, you can find some on etsy for around $60.

Upcycling an Imac

This is what I found in the trash this morning at my workplace...The one I found is not working anymore, and I'm looking for ideas to upcycle it. The most obvious is the desk lamp called the iLamp. It's a cool idea I found on the web, I'm still wondering if it's stable... I really want to try my own version with how-to-do-it instructions, unless you have a better idea?? Let me know!

The iLamp

Upcycling shipping pallet into a trunk (2/2)

This Saturday, I had time to finish the trunk. Keep in mind that this trunk will stay in my son's bedroom, so the blue might be a bit too much to your taste but I wanted to stay away from white or just wood. It's also the only wood staining bottle I had in my workshop...

The tools needed:
Wood screws, a drill/screwdriver, a jigsaw (or table saw), a brush.

 

The Material:

2 regular Shipping pallets.

The cost:

$1 for the screws.

$3 for the hinges.

The Result:

How to make it:

The main important step is (like the chair made from shipping pallet) to make each side of the trunk.

This is how they should look like (front and back view):

Once this is done, the most difficult is done, you just have to select and cut the length you want the pieces of wood for the front, back and bottom.

The lid is made of 2 pieces attach together with leftover from the legs. This is a flat view of the lid (seen from the bottom):

Conclusion:

The project can be done in 2 week ends. I think I can do some more upcycling on this trunk by using a rope as a handle to open the trunk. I'll post as soon as I find some rope...

Upcycling a coffee cup sleeve

In the last issue of ReadyMade Magazine, there's the new MacGyver Challenge. It's about upcycling a coffee cup sleeve. Since I have heard about this challenge, there were only one thing I could think about that is easy to make.....An other Ipad holder !!!! Please don't think I am a monomaniac with only one think in mind (beside upcycling) but this holder was the obvious project, made for a coffee cup sleeve.

The tool needed:

Almost nothing beside a razor blade and a pencil/ruler

The material:

Almost nothing beside having an Ipad to test it...

The cost:

The price of 2 cups of coffee :-) I don't drink so much coffee, so yesterday I went to the coffee place and took 4 sleeves to give it a try and left right away. I don't know if somebody saw me but they might have thought I was crazy.

The Result:

How to make it:

You need 2 coffee cup sleeves and follow the schematic:

You have to cut through the 2 layers (front and back)

As you can see, Front and back have different cutting patterns

Conclusion:

- It's posted on readyMade website, please come and say you like it... if you do ;-)

- It's also  possible to use only one sleeve, and it's almost as stable and sturdy than 2 sleeves:

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.