Teaching a weekly class on The Art of Upcycling is really 20% instruction and 80% planning, practicing, and making samples of what I’ll teach others to make. You know I love living in that briar patch, spending time every week practicing what I’ll preach, er, I mean teach.

Pinterest is, of course, a godsend when it comes to searching for inspiration or examples. But, in case you haven’t gotten much further than pinning things you find on Pinterest, I’ll let you in on a little secret: nothing comes together exactly like they appear on that site. And that’s good, in many ways, otherwise we’d all just be reproducing the pretty things we see, whereas with a fair amount of failure, there’s plenty of room for creativity.

Want to see some of the projects I’ve tried my hand at this month? Just click on any image below to see the slideshow and details.

I used the wonderfully strong cardboard backing that once held together some fancy designer fabric samples . . .

. . . added corks and denim and places to clip messages, and turned it into a memo board.

I played around with my stash of old albums, using paint on some . . .

. . . and paper scraps on others, to create some wall or front door decorations.

Buttons and wire scraps and tiny syrup bottles easily became bud vases and button flowers.

Some Mod Podge and scrapbook paper added to mini Altoid tins converted them into pretty boxes with countless uses – from pill containers to sewing kits to gift boxes.

I took an old, serviceable but ugly, chest of drawers and decided to use up all the random chalk paint we had left over from other projects . . .

. . . plus some pretty new hardware and scrapbook paper remnants Mod Podged to the top of it, and created something I really love!