What's it like to make cool stuff out of crap stuff in zero space?

Photo from Daniel at Manhattan Nest Blog
[Charles] People ask how we make cool furniture out of beat up junk pretty often but I think our descriptions fall kinda short. Yeah, sometimes I take them into the workshop and say, that old rusty sink will someday be an amazing couch or table or something. Honestly though I get a lot of those blank "that piece of junk?" looks there. So my point is, I can appreciate somebody who does it well and explains it well with lots of photos. The best take away for me is to do it with a sense of humor. Check out this guy Dan's conversion and explanation on his blog. It was cool enough to get him on Apartment Therapy so maybe I should stop whining and get to work on taking more photos of how we make stuff...

Recycling Green Toys

Recycling is synonymous with Tampa Street Market. If I had to explain how we ended up doing what we do now, I could probably boil it down to: we saw a truck carrying off a perfectly good _____ and decided to give it another life. Insert dresser, wood plank, or metal scrap in the blank and you'll get the idea. Furniture reincarnation is alive and well at our house. An antique dresser that is old-fashioned but solid might get a new color. Heart pine beams might become the legs to a beautiful new desk.

Anyway, we love recycling and we're not ashamed of it. So this week I came across some toys from a company called Green Toys. These are bright colored incarnations of some classic toys, such as a gardening set with little yellow pots or a cook set with multicolored plates and tea cups. They use recycled milk jugs (HDPE) to make these and go out of their way to keep them non-toxic. Heck, they're made to California standards in California! Seriously! I especially like the recycled cardboard packaging - no twist ties and no plastic bags needed. According to their website, I guess you can get these at Toys R Us or Learning Express, but I've never seen them there. I have to believe that's because those big chains are just so crowded with junk!

Come see what else is new this week and pick up your Passport to Indies. In addition to whatever Creative Loafing hands out in prizes, we've decided to give a $25 gift certificate to the TSM customer that gets the most stamps by the end of July!

-Charles