St Louis' Festival of Nations!

The Festival of Nations is a yearly event in St Louis on the last weekend in August. I've been attending for three years now, since before I actually moved here. I would have loved to have gone both days but had to work on Sunday. They have music from all over including this Reggae band. We had been walking around for awhile and took about half an hour to sit and listen. They were awesome and although I was too tired to get up and dance plenty of people did.

If your trying to decide what this has to do with living green, I guess I'll have to come up with something. Hmmm, well I did park about a mile and a half away and take the shuttle bus to the festival instead of driving around, wasting gas, trying to find a closer parking space. Does that count?

I love listening to bagpipes and this man in the weird skirt (OK I know it's a kilt) was wandering around playing it. It was wonderful, we took the time to listen even though it was starting to rain.

   

There were plenty of venders selling items from all over the world. This booth was from a store here in St Louis called MacroSun International. I love the place and loved browsing their booth. The offer quality, fair trade items from India, Nepal, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan and Refugees of Tibet, Burma and Afghanistan. Their online catalog can be found at http://www.macrosun.com/.

 There was lots to do and lots to eat and lots to buy. Since it's so close to my birthday every year my son let's me pick out my present here. This year I went back to my hippie roots and choose this great handbag. Already thinking about next year. If your in the area next August you need to check it out.

Nature Becomes Art

Into the Trees is another Etsy shop I love! This is what this wonderful artist has to say about her work and her shop.

"I am a self taught artist native of Florida in the land of sunshine and palm trees. I create my original fun art on my found reclaimed palm frond wood for about 14 years now. Never know what that new found frond is going to turn into."


I'm not going to yadda yadda yadda here. I'll just let her art speak for itself!

Only a couple days left

To enter my contest for a $20 or $10 gift certificate to my Etsy shop! Contest ends August 31st.

http://debsgoinggreen.blogspot.com/2012/08/its-my-birthday-and-ill-have-contest-if.html

Here's a Great Etsy Shop from Mexico

OK, so I have a thing for earrings, but this shop, sofiatrinker on Etsy has more than just earrings, I'll get to that later.
The kitties (aren't they cute?) were made from the bottom of a soda can. I love cats, especially black cats

This is what Sofia says about the heart earrings:  "These hip earrings were created while contemplating an empty soda can, while regretting having to throw it to the waste basket... I was reading on how much time it takes for aluminum to completely disappear, and I definitely wanted to do something about it. Hopefully, I will be able to gather as much soda cans one day, as to dramatically decrease the amount of garbage not only at home, but with my neighbors, family, friends, and gradually, all over town."

She also uses dyed orange peel for earrings. They still have a citrusy scent. I love the color!

This gorgeous necklace is made out of an upcycled tuna fish can and glass. It's really awesome!











  








I told you she has more than jewelry. These little candles made from cans are cute, cute, cute. Perfect for Christmas gifts or to keep yourself.

You can find these great items at etsy.com/shop/sofiatrinker

I Absolutely LOVE these Earrings!!

I have this earring addiction. I make no bones about it, I love earrings and keep buying more. I especially like anything that is unique and out of the ordinary. Having three shops on Etsy and always going to the forums and belonging to lots of teams I am always coming across earrings I just have to buy.

Recently though, I came across this shop, LeftTDesigns, that not only had wonderful earrings but they were upcycled. The owner of the shop uses broken china to make not only earrings but necklaces, too. I really had a hard time, at first I tried to resist but it was just too much. She had such beautiful earrings!

Since I can't really afford to buy all of them, I had to make a decision. I looked and looked but just couldn't make up my mind, they were all so pretty and I had to be practical. (yeah right). So I went to my earring collection to see what colors I needed. I had a lot of pink and purple so I decided I needed a pair of blue ones.












These are the ones I picked and I absolutely love them. The owner of LeftTDesigns carefully sands down the edges and they were nice and smooth. They dangle perfectly and I feel beautiful when I wear them. What more can you ask from a pair of earrings?

Check out all the Broken China Jewelry!

Monsanto Poster

Look at These Cute Pincussions I Found!

What would be better than sewing upcycled items using these adorable upcycled pincushions. I absolutely love them! I found this shop, Nature's Touch Boutique on Etsy.

This wonderful little pincushion in a trinket box even has a cover that will fit over the pins! What a great idea to make use of all those small trinkets and knick knacks you see at every garage sale.














I really like this one, too. It brings back memories of when I was younger. I think everyone had these small ceramic shoes for some reason.

She uses everything from planters to shot glasses to make her pincushions. Check out all the pincushions here.

It's My Birthday and I'll Have a Contest if I Want To

August is my Birthday Month but I'm not telling you the day, that's going to be part of the contest. I'm going to make it an easy contest, lots of ways to enter because I really need to get my Deb Upcycles shop off the ground. The prizes are going to be a $20 and a $10 Gift Certificate to the shop. Twenty dollars will buy just about anything in my shop. So the first entry for the $20 you will receive is when you tell me what item in my shop you would get if you won. Just post a comment in the comment section.

Do you tweet? Follow me on twitter, https://twitter.com/DebUpcycles. Make sure you leave a comment  telling me you did and a way to identify your twitter. Or would you rather just Tweet? You can get up to 3 entries for tweeting this post, my shop or anything in my shop. Use #debupcycles so I can find it and leave a comment here to tell me about it..


Follow this blog and leave a comment that you did so. That one's pretty easy isn't it?

How about Pinterest? Follow me at http://pinterest.com/debupcycles/ for one entry (I'll even follow you back). Then pin up to three of my items for extra entries. Again, just leave me a comment and your pinterest name so I can verify it.

All verified entries will go into a hat at on Sept. 1st for a drawing. Winner will be notified, please leave a way to reach you. If the prize isn't claimed within 72 hours of notification another drawing will be held.

And that's it.... Wait a minute I never told you how to win the $10. That ones easy, for every entry you have for the $20 you get to guess what day in August I was born. If nobody guesses the exact day I get to keep the $10. If more than one person gets it right, there will be a drawing to determine the winner. We'll forget about what year, I don't even want to think about that.

Garden Harvest

Purty, ain't it? Homegrown and organic!