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Clock Works

4/30/2013

Vinyl records, rusty bicycle chains, wheel rims, springs, wood, wire and assorted junk - These are the items being used by Sentinel High school art students to create wonderfully inspired sculptural clocks. Upcycled is excited to feature these recycled art pieces, designed by the students.

The students helped fuel their imagination by participating in a field trip to Home Resource, Free Cycles Missoula and Upcycled. During the trip students were able to collect items as well as ideas for their creation.

Functional art or repurposed junk, whatever it takes to put together a winning combination to transform these discarded items into art.

The student and their sculptures can be viewed at Upcycled May 3rd during First Friday events.

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Why we Upcycle.

4/27/2013

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A few days ago, I was afforded the opportunity to give a presentation about upcycling to the Hellgate High School student body. A good part of the presentation covered why one might upcycle to begin with. While some of this may be self evident, I still think it is useful to examine a bit closer. So for what it's worth, four major reasons to upcycle.

Upcycle to keep items out of the land fill and out of the recycling bins. Upcycling is preferable to both. Everyday the average American creates around 7.1 pounds of trash daily. That's over 2 billion pounds a day for our country. To put that in perspective, It's as if we throw out 200 million automobiles a year. That's a lot of trash to shuffle, burn or bury. Recycling is preferable to throwing away, but it still takes a lot of man power and energy to get the materials back into a raw state to be reused.
Upcycle to prevent the extraction of resources from nature. Rampant logging deforests our last remaining great wild lands and toxic mine tailings seep into our streams. Mass consumption extolls a catastrophic environmental impact. While we will never entirely stop the extraction of resources, upcycling can make a significant difference.
Upcycle out of necessity. While it's sometime easy to forget when living in a culture where almost anything you could need can be bought in a box store, this is the first and primary reason for most upcycling. Since the dawn of man, people have reused materials on hand to build shelter, mend fences and fashion tools. In America, the Great Depression brought about poverty but with it an uptick in upcycling. Case in point flour sack dresses. Today, around the world people are upcycling their way to a better life. Case in point the upcycled orchestras that have popped up independently in Congo and in Paraguay.
Upcycle because it allows for awesome! Whether it's a shipping container turned into housing, art from license plates or a sea kayak made of 2 liter bottles, there's a ton of interesting and unique things being made through upcycling. Need more examples? Pop by our store.

Why do you upcycle?

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Building Upcycled Displays

4/10/2013

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I love building upcycled displays. In fact, it's one of my favorite parts of owning Upcycled Missoula. I think the trick to good upcycled displays, is to create something that reuses materials in novel ways to best present the goods for sale. A while back I built this display for my Up Line brand, albeit to be used in another store. The display is minimalist yet elegant in design, and serves it's intended purpose well. I'm so geeked up about it, I wanted to share it with you all.

It's a two sided display intended for an open floor space that shows my entire line with a minimal footprint, and it's 99.99% upcycled. Materials used are as follows: one half of a folding shutter door, three license plates, eight salvaged 5" screws, four 6" angle brackets for stabilizing feet, a mirror from a broken medicine cabinet, cereal box cardboard for the signage and new tacks to attach the signs.

Have a cool upcycled project of your own? Please share a photo with us..

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Clock Works

Why we Upcycle.

Building Upcycled Displays

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