Creative downsprout

Found here

Upcycling old boat into bookshelf

This is just an original way to display your favorite books. I just have to find a boat now...

Upcycling cardboard into a bike!

This bike is 95% made of cardboard and 100% recyclabe material, and can support riders up to 480lb... The development took three years, two years spent on figuring out cardboard complications. The strength of the bike is based on a "simple" principle: If you fold cardboard once, you are not getting twice the strength but three time the strength!
It's also waterproof and guaranteed to last five years.
Best of all, according to its creator Izhar Gafni, the cost of the Alpha bike would be around $10 per unit!
This is a great upcycling but a bit too much work to try at home.

You can see the bike in action in this short video:

Yellow pages upcycling

Once again, I got this Yellow Pages book an my front door... I don't understand why they spend so much money on something that is never used by most of us...
Kristiina lahde has a better solution, she makes sculptures out of these yellow pages, this is few pictures from her Hive serie:

© Kristiina Lahde

© Kristiina Lahde

Upcycling oil cans into ....electric guitars

The people selling these guitars at Bohemian Guitars were inspired from "the resourceful residents of the townships in South Africa who re-purpose materials into playable instruments".
A percentage of all guitar sales goes to donating instruments to schools and youth organizations.
Now they also have their own oil cans. It's a bit less eco friendly but I guess these vintage oil can might be hard to find and collect.

 Here is a video from Bohemian Guitars:

Upcycled Apple Jewelry...

You can find them here

and here

Using Sugru

You might already know Sugru but for those who don't know about it:
I have discovered this great "air-curing" rubber that can fix anything. So instead of trashing a power supply, shoes, racks, hooks. Just try Sugru, it looks to me that you can fix almost anything with it and I'm not getting any money or free stuff from this company.
It looks like some play-Doh, it can be formed by hand and once it's exposed to air it cures to a tough flexible silicone rubber overnight.
It looks like the possibilities are endless.

You can protect your cell phone:

You can prevent breaking from your cables:

You can have ergonomic handles:

You can fix shoes and laces :

You can make a camera kids proof and colorful:

You can upcycle stuff too and make:

hooks:

from instructables.com

Or lego bracelets:

from Instructables.com

I fell in love with this material... I had to share with you!

Shipping pallet

You can find tons of upcycling with shipping pallets, but these german designer (Produktwerft) makes coffee tables with a design and a finish I have never seen before.

Tissue box

Not exactly upcycling, but I like the idea of redesigning the box into something unexpected. It also can be part of an afternoon-activity with kids.

Upcycled fish tank

From Flickr

Old style

New style

Upcycled accessories

From amazon

This is not a new idea, but I love the idea of changing the color by adding an other lego on the top of this base, so you can match with your shirt.

From technabob

Not sure I would wear this belt, just a tiny bit too geeky for me...

One more clock...

There are too many computer boxes where I work, we keep them just in case we need to send them back to get them fixed. Let's face the reality, most of the time they are out of warranty when they decide to die... Then, I took one of them.

Easy to do:

You just need a mechanism that you can get from any old clock, or you can buy it online on a website like this one, it's even cheaper to buy a cheap clock from Ikea or a dollar store and get the mechanism out of it.
You just have to make a hole with a pencil in the box, that's it. It's just an expensive clock if you have to buy the laptop...

Ikea hack of the year 2012

Big fan of the ikeahackers.net website I could not resist to show the Knuff table, hack of the year 2012, made by imchaser from Singapore.
Upcycling  this :

Into this:

A great upcycling for a very functional coffee table!

Book bookshelf

Instead of trashing books for recycling, what about reusing them for another purpose, Not tom designers found a simple creative way. I don't know if they used a long metallic stem going accross all the books and stopping in the middle of the first and last book, but it certainly doable at home.

It reminds me of this old Ikea ad I already showed you few months ago :

Upcycling cassette tape ribbons into..... portraits!

Erika Simmons aka Iri5 makes unbelievable portraits, just using the ribbons from tape! Have a look at some of these portraits or go on her website for more! This is amazing.

Here she is, creating one of this art piece.

Upcycling zip ties

These amazing bowl and vase were created by Chen Neta and Rochman Mali from "The Israeli Connection Project". The ingenious way the zip ties are connected is creating designs and curves. I'm collecting zip ties right now to try the fruit bowl. Did you know that you can reuse a zip tie?
Check this quick video, some zip ties open better if you use some kind of needle or the tip of a knife.

Christmas wreath made with spoons

Found here

Found here

and here



This last one where you will find a full tutorial on how to make this beautiful wreath by clicking here.

Upcycled Christmas tree

Picture from Design you trust

In Lithuania, they used 40 000 bottom of sprite bottles linked together with cable ties. The light inside the tree give a beautiful glowing effect.