Skraptacular Bulletin: Fête, Festival, Fun...But What Are you Giving Up?

  

Fling Your Mardis Gras Bling...and Then Upcycle It!

In the never-ending winter we hope you've managed to celebrate Mardis Gras or Carnival. Take the last opportunity to step out of the Annual February Misery Day Parade and high step it into a Mardi Gras March! Skraptacular has a soft spot for NOLA's Mardi Gras celebration; we got our start selling upcycled crafts to benefit Hurricane Katrina victims.

So if you're done with the February fling and done with the beads and bling, here's a way you can transform your Mardis Gras beads into some nifty coasters. Another option is to recycle or buy recycled Mardi Gras beads and throws from Arc and do your part to create “Green” jobs for people with intellectual disabilities.

But what if you're giving up wine and beer for Lent? You don't have to be Christian to adopt the discipline of the Lenten season in the same way you don't have to be Buddhist to learn the discipline of Zen meditation practice. Lent begins this year on Ash Wednesday, March 5th and extends for forty days until Easter.

What Are You Giving Up?

According to the experts it takes exactly 21 days in succession for you to make new behavior into a habit. If you stick to Lent guidelines, you've got almost twice that time to make helpful behaviors a part of your life or get rid of harmful ones. At Skraptacular we have some suggestions (don't we always?)

What if you...

1. Give up taking plastic bags at the grocery store?

2. Weave the plastic bags you have into plarn-plastic bag yarn-creations?

3. Compost your veggies every Sunday through GrowNYC ?

4. Own a corner of the city and clean-up litter?

5. Stop buying bottled water?

6. Make clothing purchases from ethical fashion brands such as, RepurposingNOLA andLoomstate

Skraptacular's Work with United Palace is Habit Forming 

  

We're starting our own new habits. Rather than visiting the underserved children who come to the  United Palace Cathedral's after school program every other week, we're going every week, bringing our Skrappy interns who are full of enthusiasm for every project we embark upon. This week we made bottle cap refrigerator magnets, some of which we'll be giving out as party favors at our Springing Affair fundraiser. In addition to the unalloyed happiness of using their hands making crafts, our young charges learn to wed the concepts of creativity and conservation. It's a win/win situation.