Saturday, January 2, 2010

2009 RePlay

Woo hoo 2009! It's been a busy, trash-filled year. Here's a replay of all of the upcycling goodness that headed our way and we sent right back at-ya.

I started out full-force continuing with my Chief Design Junkieness to create loads of TerraCycle design projects.


By Earth Day, the Bronx Zoo had hired us for a month long eco-celebration and my RePlayGround crew headed up there to share their crafty upcycling skills. Kids (and adults, too) walked away with projects like the cereal box wallets, CD suncatchers, and more.


Earth Day also saw the premier of Garbage Moguls, which follows me and my TerraCycle friends on our trash-packed adventures. Even Oprah and Good Morning America took notice and recommended a watch.


I also signed a big, fancy book deal (well, as fancy as you can be with garbage anyway) at Sterling Publishing. Our book, ReMake It - over 100 projects from the stuff you usually scrap, will be hitting bookshelves in April 2011. We pushed on full-force this year and concepted, created, illustrated, and wrote instructions for over 100 do-it-yourself projects.

The superstar designer, Abby Kelly, landed on our RePlayGround just in time to help with all things book, kits, trash, and design. We're very lucky to have her talent, impeccable design style, and sense of humor around here where we look forward to creating more trashy goodness this year.


That's Carly on the left and Abby on the right

Carly Miller, our official Garbage Outreach Coordinator, continued with her overwhelming enthusiasm in demonstrating to others how to upcycle everything in your path. She headed up coordinating the big Bronx Zoo event plus birthday parties, bar mitzvahs and more. You can even catch her in person as she continues the Eco-Workshop series at Sustainable NYC in the East Village on the second Wednesday of every month. (except for a brief hiatus in January where Abby will be flexing her crafty skills).
And if you're interested in booking us for an event send an email our way.


The ReMake It recycling kits continued to sell like eco-hotcakes! They've even been picked up by Signals catalog and our friends over at Uncommon Goods. We're continuing to work with the goods people at Streamline to create the latest, greatest in ReMaking It. Keep your eyes peeled in 2010 for some new kits on their way. There will be projects with plastic bags, and some good old fashioned play-with-your-trash-type-games.

In addition to keeping up this blog, we also contributed our fair share of upcycling project goodness to our faves over at Craftzine, Ecouterre, and Planet Green.

This year we were also honored and blown away by the fantastic words featured in publications like the New York Times, Rachael Ray Magazine, Time Out New York, and many more.

More Garbage Moguls episodes were taped this year, so be sure to check out National Geographic Network in 2010 around Earth Day for a more episodes in the series - as we design our way out of garbage messes.

We wrapped up the year with a good ole fashioned ReMake the Holidays party on our RePlayGround. We drank up some good local brew sponsored by the Brooklyn Brewery. Since no good party is complete without a fun craft project, we showed party participants how to transform 6 Metrocards into this super-sweet holiday ornament.


Stay tuned to our website and blog as we continue to add, evolve and just generally upcycle everything in our path this year.
Happy 2009 and here's to an upcycled 2010!!!

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