Photo Challenge 3KCBWDAY2

This is Eco Bunny, and he, like me, lives in the beautiful country of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Unfortunately some of the countryside in this beautiful country is messed up by rubbish - plastic bottles, plastic bags and other stuff like that. Eco Bunny is made from and stuffed with plastic bags and is leading the recycling revolution in our neighbourhood. Here he is just across the street from our house in a pile of cardboard boxes.

Here he is again in the bombed out house across from our house.

And once again visiting another pile of rubbish. Unfortunately these pictures only show the bad things about Bosnia and Herzegovina - but for the photo challenge I think they work! But - please take some time to look at some of my other blog posts where you will see how beautiful the country really is, and if you ever get the chance, you really should visit!

This blog post is for day 2 of Eskimimi's Knitting and Blog Week.

To nominate my photos for the photo challenge prize please click here.

To see more photos from today's photo challenge copy and paste the code 3KCBWDAY2 into google.

The Return of the Eco-bunnies

My Eco-bunnies have returned from from their visit to Stampington and Company where they took part in a photo shoot and appeared in the Winter 2011 issue of Stuffed Magazine. They will now be available in my Etsy shop.

outoftheframe in Stuffed Magazine

Another one of my exciting parcels that arrived the other day was my copy of Stuffed Magazine. And why was it so exciting? Well.... here it is - outoftheframe in print for the first time!

Etsy Craft Party

Welcome to our Etsy Craft Party! The people at Etsy encouraged Etsians all over the world to have craft parties on 18th June in celebration of Etsy's 5th Birthday. I have a friend,BlessedFlower, who is preparing to open an etsy shop and so together we decided to organise a party here in our town Mostar. There are not many Etsy sellers in Bosnia and Herzegovina and there is only one other in our town (well 2 cos they're a married couple, but it's one shop!). We wrote to all the Etsy sellers in BiH to let them know about the party but most of them live in the capital city, Sarajevo and it is too far for them to travel for one night. But the other Etsy sellers from Mostar came and it was great to meet them. They make amazing jewellery, you can check it out in their Etsy shop - Lottaart.

The idea of our party was to have fun encouraging other people to be creative. We prepared different activities for people to try:

• crocheting bags with plarn
• making sock monkeys
• sewing flowers
• making altered art journals

We also had a good supply of cookies, brownies and other snacks :)

Everyone had a great time and hopefully we encouraged those already creative people to try new things and we awakened the sleeping creativity in everyone else!

Experimenting with t-shirt yarn

I've been experimenting with t-shirt yarn. In the picture you can see the balls of yarn I made from old t-shirts and my attempt at amigurumi using the yarn. I'm not convinced... the texture is kind of hard and rough. I think t-shirt yarn would be better used for making bags or table mats. For Eco-gurumis I think I'll stick with plastic bags.

Eco Bunny and the Land of Plastic Bag Trees

'Welcome to Bosnia and Herzegovina - the land where plastic bags grow on trees!' was what someone said to us on our first visit to this country - which is now our home.

When we left the UK 18 months ago we were in the habbit of taking our 'bag for life' with us to the Supermarket, paying for plastic bags in some shops or just not using a bag at all - especially if you're buying something small.

Here in Bosnia Herzegovina they love plastic bags! The first time I went into a shop here and bought a bar of chocolate I went to leave the shop and the shop-keeper started calling after me, 'you need a plastic bag!' and no matter how many times I explained that I didn't, they wouldn't let me out of the shop without a bag! I'm kinda used to it now and I dutifully take the plastic bag.

The problem is that as a result of this there are plastic bags everywhere -and there really are places where you could be forgiven for thinking that they do grow on trees.

Eco Bunny is made with and stuffed with plastic bags that I have collected from all my shopping trips! He is pointing the way to a new future where plastic bags will not grow on trees and pollute the environment. He is available in my etsy shop.