Green Crafts: Making Paper Outta Lint

I stumbled across this Instructable on a craft blog -- it gives you step by step instructions on how to make paper out of lint. I usually compost my dryer lint, but am going to start collecting it to try this out. I'm not sure I have enough at home right now (I don't remember how recently I emptied the container into which I usually stuff it). Depending on how fine the screen mesh needs to be, I may at least be able to make a deckle and mold this evening. I think that I still have the screens from the old recently-replaced windows from the back of my building. I'm not sure of how practical this finished paper actually is. I suspect that it may be tricky to write on it. It could be used to make mattes for photos or to make decorative wall hangings or to add to collages. I'll have to think about this for a bit or Google some more.

Other uses for dryer lint (according to various tips online) include: using it to cushion small parcels you mail, making stuffed animals or leaving it hanging from trees in the spring for birds to use for their nests. You can even make dryer lint clay or papier mâché. And then there are folks like these who take it to a whole other level.

The nice thing about dryer lint is that it's easy to get your hands on it. Especially from people who'd otherwise just throw it out with the trash.

Got tea bags?

I've mostly given up coffee. Over the years I've gone from being an indiscriminate 4-5 cup a day coffee freak to sipping on organic green tea throughout the day. For the longest time, I was buying green tea bags that weren't individually wrapped. Unfortunately, I've been having a hard time finding organic green tea bags that aren't individually wrapped, and am thinking that the way to go will be to buy loose tea, even thought I'm pretty sure that I've only seen it sold by Lipton's (or some other similar company). The smart thing to do would be to give it up altogether. Maybe someday.

So we recycle paper at work and I've been throwing my little tea bag wrappers into the bin (and even bringing the ones I use at home). Then I stumbled across this neat idea on the Instructables website and think that I may very well give it a try this weekend. The instructables' creator even has some images up on her website for Xmas card ideas. I decided to nose around a little and ended up finding this website that contains links to other sites devoted to tea bag folding. More Google searches showed me that tea bag folding (aka kaleidoscope folding) is apparently quite a popular hobby and has been so for years -- especially for folks who like things like origami. Unfortunately, a lot of people print out their own ''tiles'' to use instead of recycling tea bags or reusing decorative paper, which would sort of defeat my own purpose in trying this out at all.