Boo!

Slowly but surely, I feel like I'm repeating myself over and over again, but I just can't help: everything that emerges my crafting corner recently seems to go by the "recycle/upcycle" theme - either I'm digging out long-forgotten treasures from my stash, or I intentionally decide to use things a normal person would throw away. 
Long story short, I've planned on upcycling beermats for ages, mainly because I think their size could be handy for some kind of ornament or else, while the cardboard itself gives a pretty solid base to work with. The problem is: I don't really like beer, meaning I don't drink it at all. However, I sneaked a couple of beermats with me on my last visit to Prague, and they've been hiding in my drawer ever since. I planned to create something with a beermat as a base, I just couldn't come up with the exact idea of what I wanted.
Until I recently found an anti-trash ad in one of the city magazines. What looks like a cute little ghost at first, is, in fact, a trashed plastic bag (presumably floating somewhere in the ocean?), accompanied by the slogan "Waste is scarier than you think".  

And something in my head began spinning... Take out the beermat, check whether the little fella would fit on its surface, cut the ad out and think some more. After assembling matching blue colours from my paper stash, I began to arrange the cutouts: according to my plan, one side of the beermat would be covered by the plastic demon...

... the edge was to be lined with a light blue ribbon... 

... and after some more thinking, I figured what to do with the backside, too. Even though I originally planned to just place the sentiment all over the surface to create a decorative hanger, I later changed my mind to create something practical. 
And so, the rear has a story of its own. Trying to avoid unnecessary trash when shopping, I recently began to visit Ljubljana's first plastic-free grocery store. I'm far from being an environmental saint and still do buy too many wrapped things because honestly they often come handy, but I do try to completely avoid packaging especially when it comes to vegetables or things I happen to buy regularly. I got used to always bring my cloth bag with me and can't help feeling more and more awkward when I see how carelessly people will fill their shopping carts with millions of things wrapped in plastic. Congratulations on tearing off 10 plastic bags from the roll as soon as you enter the shop, Mr. & Mrs. Retiree! Now if you'd keep in mind that you're going to leave the planet in a couple of years (no offense, just a biological fact) while I'll have to live another couple of decades with your trash in my soil and water, would you understand why I'm giving you the stinky look?
Anyhow, since you can bring your own containers to the zero-waste store and weigh them before you fill them up, I thought I wouldn't need to weight my tins over and over again if I just save one barcode for each size, label it properly and bring it with me each time I stop by to fill up my food supplies. With this in mind, I created a paper slit for the barcode tags, trimmed the ad sentiment to the right size and voilá: my new zero-waste shopping gadget.
And while the rear seems ok just the way it turned out, I added a tiny silver sticker to line the trash ghost image because I just have to add little embellishments here and there ;) 

A little contribution to the October collection of Create in Austria - artwork created by Austrians and/or in Austria.

A blue and white combination I can approve: beautiful Vrbsko jezero/Wörthersee on a beautiful autumn afternoon...

... alongside with the only white thing that is more than welcome to float in the water. 

challenges: 
- krafty chicks: ATG
- 613 avenue create: ATG
- brown sugar: ATG
- cardz4guyz: spooky
- crafting with an attitude: ATG
- crafty calendar: Halloween
- crafty catz: ATG with optional twist "witching hour"
- creative inspirations: Halloween, masculine
- creative moments: ATG with optional twist "spooky"
- cute card thursday: Halloween
- everybody art: ribbon/twine
- fabnfunky: Halloween
- kreativtanten: ATG
- little red wagon: cut it out
- love to craft: ATG 
- morgans artworld: ATG
- path of positivity: courage (I'll probably stretch the "courage" thing quite a bit here and say that courage doesn't need to be something loud and big - rather, it can be a comparatively small step out of your comfort zone, a quick reality check on whether we really need everything we think we need, and a small change of habits towards a more sustainable future. And it might as well turn out that in order to change things, one doesn't need to have an immense courage at all - just use the tiny bit you have and be amazed at what you can accomplish with it. Change doesn't need to be a scary thing at all, and the courage you have, however small, is more that enough to overcome the fears that are in your way.)
- pennys papertake: ATG
- male room: CAS
- through the craftroom door: ATG
- tuesday throwdown: ATG
- wortartwednesday: ATG