Repurposing Tutorials


Before you throw something away, take a moment to look at it and find its hidden potential. What characteristics does it have? How could you use those features to your advantage? Make the most of your creativity and brainstorm ways to give it a second lease on life. These repurposing tutorials show you how to make the most of what you have to create something cool and useful, without even having to buy materials!

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DIY books and notepads: Reuse leftover notebook paper

Rimangono sempre delle pagine nei quaderni alla fine dell’anno scolastico, quindi usale per creare dei libretti e quadernetti fai da te da riempire con disegni, racconti o segreti! Bastano 5 minuti ed è GRATIS!

There are always some leftover pages at the end of kids’ notebooks at the end of the school year. Rip them out and use them to make your own fun DIY books and notepads to fill with drawings, stories, or secret diary! It only takes about 5 minutes!

What is it that’s so appealing about a nice, new and never-before-touched blank book or notebook?

I suppose it’s the anticipation and excitement about all the things that it can become. You can write a book in it. Draw pictures. Study plants or animals or anything else that you love and keep your notes in it. Glue magazine cuttings in it. Write a secret diary. There are no limits to your imagination and creativity!

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My kids love blank books, too. We have piles of illustrated books, their own made-up school books for their toys, and tomes of secret writings that I’ve been warned to never look in. Even before they knew how to write, they just loved filling up those blank pages with drawings and stickers. Something about the fact that the books had covers made them feel so much more real to them.

There are always some leftover pages at the end of kids’ notebooks at the end of the school year. Rip them out and use them to make your own fun DIY books and notepads to fill with drawings, stories, or secret diary! It only takes about 5 minutes!

It’s now the end of May and school will be out soon. And, as always, the kids will come home on the last day of school with a bunch of half-used notebooks. Like this one above. “Read and complete.” Apparently Sofia never did get around to completing this assignment before the end of the year.

Normally I just rip out the used pages and give the kids the notebooks with the few remaining pages to draw and write in. But by the time summer vacation comes around, they usually are sick of using those same notebooks that they’ve been using all year round. They don’t want to see the same old covers that remind them of sitting at a desk for hours on end.

There are always some leftover pages at the end of kids’ notebooks at the end of the school year. Rip them out and use them to make your own fun DIY books and notepads to fill with drawings, stories, or secret diary! It only takes about 5 minutes!

But if I give them that very notebook paper in a different form, it’s a totally different story. A mini notebook with a pretty colorful cover?! Yes, please! I want to write a story in it!

There are always some leftover pages at the end of kids’ notebooks at the end of the school year. Rip them out and use them to make your own fun DIY books and notepads to fill with drawings, stories, or secret diary! It only takes about 5 minutes!

A clean cover and blank pages? Yes! I want a book to draw and write about dinosaurs in!

All of a sudden, after a tiring year of studying and writing, they want to study and write again! All because of a new packaging of their usual school materials! And what’s best is that you’re using paper you already have, so it’s free, and it takes less than 5 minutes to make one!

So, what do you say? Want to reuse leftover notebook paper to make “brand new” blank books and notepads? Let’s get started!

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Super quick upcycled DIY tulle flowers

Non sai cosa fare con il packaging delle bomboniere? Ecco come riciclare il tulle dei confetti per creare dei bellissimi fiori fai da te per abbellire casa!

Use up scraps of tulle or upcycle party favor packaging to decorate your home. These DIY tulle flowers are super quick and easy to make and look great!

I love flowers. Heck, who doesn’t? I think pretty much every lady does.

I love how they smell. I love the colors. I love the beauty and joy a vase of fresh cut flowers gives a home.

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What I don’t love is when they start to wilt. And turn brown. And I feel guilty having cut them (or knowing that someone cut them for me).

The obvious solution are fake flowers, but I am quite frankly turned off by the thought of plastic or silk flowers made by overworked Chinese factory workers, both for ethical and environmental reasons. So my eco-friendly solution that makes me and my ideals happy are homemade flowers made from repurposed materials!

Use up scraps of tulle or upcycle party favor packaging to decorate your home. These DIY tulle flowers are super quick and easy to make and look great!

Italians love party favors. Or rather, as I call them, “event favors.” Little sacks or boxes of Jordan almonds (sugar-coated almonds) are given away along with a silver, ceramic or other type of trinket at weddings, baptisms, first communions, births, graduations, 18th birthday parties, and so on.

The almonds are 99% of the time wrapped in little circles of tulle which are color-coded according to the type of event. Students who graduate from university use red packaging so, seeing as my husband is a university professor, we tend to accumulate small pieces of red tulle. And last year was the year of first communions in my daughter’s class, so she came home from school with her classmates’ favors for the entire month of May. I held on to all these bits of colored goodness, knowing that inspiration would eventually strike.

Use up scraps of tulle or upcycle party favor packaging to decorate your home. These DIY tulle flowers are super quick and easy to make and look great!

And then it came to me: flowers! The circular shape make them perfect for making incredibly quick and easily customizable flowers to decorate the home. But even if you don’t have a collection of tulle circles from “event favors”, you can very easily use scraps of tulle you have left over from making reusable produce bags or no-sew tutus!

So what do you say? Are you ready to make your own DIY tulle flowers from your fabric scraps? Then let’s get started!

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