Saturday, June 28, 2008

Home Decor Goes Green

The movement toward greener living is creating a market for homes built with sustainable, non-toxic (read: formaldehyde free) materials, painted with voc-free paints, outfitted with energy-saving appliances and equipped with solar panels. If this sounds like your current interior design/decorating project, then be sure to have a look at the following earth-friendly, recycled, upcycled, sustainable home decor from some of the Interior Design Team's eco-conscious creators/designers.

This round flower night light from Mariposa Avenue is a perfect example. It is made from a recycled tuna can, cut with a flower design, powder coated and finished with a glossy top coat. See more of Mariposa Avenue's lamps, sconces and night lights...

This beautiful, distressed-look frame is made by Second Line Frames from wood salvaged from Hurricane Katrina...not only a great use for this recycled wood siding, but a portion of sales also go to help in the rebuilding effort!


Collaging is one of my favorite ways to use what would otherwise be thrown away. Art Studio makes these beautiful fine art collage pieces from recycled newsprint and other collage elements. This stunning piece, titled "Round and Round" is mounted on heavy paper and ready to frame. Aside from geometric shapes and patterns, Art Studio offers a variety of lovely abstract pieces as well.

This woven rag table runner by Ron's Rag Rugs is woven from recycled fabrics on heirloom looms. Rag Rugs offers a great variety of colors and patterns, from table runners to throw rugs!

This lovely candle holder by Oak Studios of Design is made from stained glass pieces set into a recycled glass base. Oak Studio of Design also creates mosaic lighted bottles and many other home accents and gifts from recycled materials.

Decoupaged bowls by Bombus, using recycled world maps! Another wonderful accent piece and so earthy! Bombus also makes a colorful postage stamp bowl that I love!


After nearly a decade of making clocks from a variety of materials (including recycled vinyl records), last year my husband (and partner) and I discovered SDF - sustainable design fiberboard - as an alternative to the mdf (medium density fiberboard) we'd been using for our clocks for many years. SDF is a wonderful material that is made from 100% recycled wood pulp and is formaldehyde free (one of the big drawbacks of using mdf is the formaldehyde off-gassing). We also switched from using acrylic paints to milk paints, a non-toxic, sustainable (as long as there are cows) and biodegradable alternative.
I don't want anyone to depart with any tightly held secret sources, but I'd love to hear comments about any sustainable, earth-friendly resources being utilized by our talented team - great info for artists who want to go green!!!
To see more beautiful, recycled, sustainable home decor, go to etsy.com and search "interiordesignteam" and "recycled". Also, there are so many more IDT artists utilizing earth-friendly materials that I may do a Part 2 next month!
Cheers!



15 comments:

Kate Ladd Art said...

Super items ! Something for everyone, I love the bowls with the decoupaged maps !!

:: creative brand strategies :: demand generation :: said...

Thanks for this post, is so important to recognize eco-friendly options. We love to use organic and eco-fabulous materials like organic fabrics and batting, milk paints and natural stains.

After using regular artist acrylics in our art projects for years, we found that it is so much nicer to use natural and healthy materials that are safe for the artisans and our clients.

Unknown said...

Gorgeous selection!! I'm always so blown away by the fantastic items created by this team. This was a particularly awesome selection! I love those map bowls, and that rag table runner is gorgeous!!

Andrea said...

What a great selection of items! I love that you highlighted eco-friendly items for the home!

Anonymous said...

I agree with the eco-friendly, that's awesome. Seems to but a subject not touched very often for home decor.

dianeclancy said...

These are wonderful ideas for resuing things to be green!! Thank you for sharing these!!

I had no idea those wonderful lights were tuna cans!!

~ Diane Clancy
www.DianeClancy.com/blog
www.DianeClancy.etsy.com

Ron's Rag Rugs said...

Kudos to you, Mary! Thank you so much for featuring items made from reused/recycled materials. We both grew up in midwestern farming families and we lived by "Use it up and wear it out." We can all help this wonderful planet we live on by adopting commonsense habits and restraints. Enough of my soapbox! Thank you for including one of our handwoven rag tablerunners.

Lisa said...

Fantastic post! We are trying to be more eco friendly every day. I'm so glad that there are other artists out there doing the same thing.

Mary Preiser Potts said...

Thanks for all the great comments - I think I touched on something here. Look for eco-post #2 on the fourth Saturday of next month where I will search out more earth-friendly home decor items from our team!
Cheers! Mary

Jean Levert Hood said...

These are wonderful selections! I am amazed at those beautiful frames from Second Line Frames. As a South Louisiana native, these are some of my favorites. The colors are perfect.

Craftymoose Crafts said...

Wonderful examples of upcycling and going green! I love the colorful rug.

Kandas | GratitudeGeek said...

Thank you for this post. Lately green is the theme in the trade magazines I receive. Large companies are jumping on the green bandwagon. Thing is... small companies like those that belong to Design Style Guide, have been green all along. Our company uses only recycled and repurposed packing supplies to ship our furniture. I write about being green on my blog quite often. Thank you again for focusing on green.

Anonymous said...

Beautiful items. Green is definitely in now. I love my photos are designed to last for 100 years. I even offer bamboo papers now.

erinberry said...

Yay for recycled art! I really like Bombus's pieces.

I love making it too - It makes me happy to reuse beautiful things that might otherwise get tossed aside or thrown away :)

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