People in England generate almost 100 million tons of rubbish every year, so artists who use it up to create beautiful items, do the planet a great service. It’s not ‘creative’ to visit Hobbycraft and buy lots of over-priced plastic tat, to call it art. Real art is about using up reclaimed materials to make into something beautiful, and also help to reduce the world’s trash mountain.
Aimee Maxelon creates beautiful ‘bouquets’ of flowers, made from littered plastic bottles, cut and shaped by hand and coloured with homemade dyes (may fade over time).
Ideal for everlasting flowers if you don’t have a garden, or if you can’t have real flowers due to allergies or pets.
For real bouquets, learn of unsafe flowers to display near pets – even brushing a tail against can harm). Avoid facing indoor foliage to gardens, to help stop birds flying into windows.
If Making Your Own Upcycled Art…
Remove rusty nails if recycling pallets. Never upcycle tin into birdhouses (these overheat and bright colours attract predators).
Never remove pebbles/sand from beaches, this disturbs ecosystems and can cause floods. Also don’t remove seaweed (experts ‘give it a haircut’ without removing the roots – seaweed is also dangerous if dogs eat it, as it expands in the stomach.
You can’t compost magazines due to toxic inks, but you can put them in recycling bins (like newspapers) if you’re not making them into other things.
