Plant/herb markers from old spoons

Over at Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge is all about recycle and upcycling.

I once bought these spoons at the thriftstore or as we call them recycle stores. But for me they were too big, I can't eat off them, so they've been sitting in a closet for a while.
Today at the allotment garden I found a lot of plastic plant tags that were corroded by the sunlight and were brittle, they all snapped.

I had been thinking about the challenge whilst weeding, ofcourse, and I thought to myself: "those spoons are stainless steel, so they should last"...
So I got out my gesso to prime them, then mixed up acryllic paint into nice pastel colors.
Not sure if you  need the gesso as a primer, but just to be safe I used it anyway.
I then sourced these tissue papers I get with gifts or

even stampsets, like the green chevron one. I have many, black on white polka dots from the Ton p.e. but they didn't go with my pastel theme.

I decoupaged pieces of tissue paper on the back of the spoon and on the front I wrote herb names on tissue paper with a Sharpie.

I'm not 100% sold on these , layout wise. I think they might look better without the tissue paper, so whilst I type this I have two new spoons drying I will leave "bland".
I guess also the back left unpainted might be nice and shiny to scare off pigeons from my crops.

And for yet another idea it might be possible to use chalkboard paint, it comes in pretty colors these days, but those would be for indoor use only as one  rainy day will probably erase your plant markers ;-) I

don't have chalkboard paints and or indoor herbplants.

I first tried to decoupage cliparts I printed, but even normal printing paper was too thick for these curved shapes.
I guess if you have knives laying around...

I like to shop at the recycle shop, although their prices resemble more antique shops than second hand these days, they look up things and price them accordingly, which is good for them, but they get it for free and should use fixed prices I think.
Anyway I like to think everything I rescue doesn't end up in landfill.
I compost my green waste, collect glass, metal, plastic for the appropriate containers, as well as spent cooking oil, lamps, batteries, shoes, textiles, paper and make regular trips with empty soda bottles as we have a deposit system in the Netherlands

I try not to buy tinned food or food in glass jars as they mean more trips to the recycle spots and I like to avoid those trips...not near my house and on a bicycle you can only take little bits at the time, but somehow the plastic bin piles up really quickly...
Did you know there are worms that can compost your green waste and other worm towers that can deal with diapers and yet another that can eat up all the dogwaste and transform all this into usable stuff for your garden?
If you have babies or toddlers in diapers I would suggest to look into one of those bins as they reduce your waste drastically. There's talk of introducing  a pay as you go system for your waste in Delft at least, they weigh your bin and charge you somehow, there's a chip in your wheelie bin to record all this, not sure how this will work, but yeah, the less kilos the better ;-)

 

Some of my herb pots look a little sorry, so sorry about that, the ground in it was frozen solid, so I could only slip the spoons in at the edges of the pot. Hopefully they all survive the winter, the rosemary is in flower already. You can see the frost on my neighbour's roof...

Even the paint mix thing
 is  from a package of tape, perfect little dish I use and re-use



For more information on the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge, see this