I Carve You - Old Books Transformed into Beautiful Works of Art

Foto: Julia Strand

We've learned to treat books with respect - not to let them fall down, bend their pages or even, gasp, scribble into them! Just imagine someone taking an X-Acto blade to them and carving about merrily. Well, as we can see here, it is not always carnage that ensues but a carefully chiseled tribute to the craft that is book making.

Julia Strand is a Minnesota-based artist who gives new life to old books. She picks each new subject with care and carves it according to its strength, which could be text, type or images. Only content is not so important. After all, this is what got these books in trouble in the first place: old, dusty and outdated, they're the rejects of a trade that churns out hundreds of thousands of new books globally each year, leaving thousands to be discarded.

Foto: Julia Strand

Thus, book lovers need not despair over Strand's dissecting ways as she only uses discarded books. She explains: "“I love books. Because of this, I only use books that are no longer valued for their content, and never carve rare or new books. I’ve deliberately put down books if I think someone is likely to appreciate them intact.” Phew! That's a relief.

To see more of her work, you can visit her blog Hokey Stokes here at Blogger or in this article. Her last blog entry seems to have been in September of last year but we sure hope that doesn't mean she's stopped making her wonderful art.

Poo-tiful: Paper Made Out of Elephant Dung

Photo: Justin Baeder  

Yup, you read that right. There’s paper made out of elephant poo out there. And it’s nice looking too and doesn’t smell at all. This just goes to show that you can make paper out of any kind of fiber. But one step after the other. Let’s look at how paper is made out of elephant poo.

First things first. Elephants are large animals and thus, spend almost 16 hours a day eating to sustain all that bod mass. They are not only purely vegetarian but herbivores, meaning they chomp on the leaves and bark of trees, shrubs, fruits, grasses and herbs. As poor digesters, 50% of what goes into an elephant comes out exactly the same way, thus elephants’ dung is just fiber. And guess what, fibers are the first stage of the elephant poo paper making process. Thank you, Mr. or Ms. Elephant!

Photo: Ian Barbour

Then, the dung has to be collected. And there’s lots of it – an average elephant will produce about 50 kg of dung. Every day. Phew, that’s a lot of dung! (In case you were wondering, to get that kind of, er, output, an elephant eats about 200-250 kg of food a day!) But back to the 50 kg of dung – that’s about enough for 115 sheets of paper. Not bad, eh?

Photo: Harvey Barrison 

Now, the collected dungs gets washed and boiled for about five hours. Yup, slow and steady does it. The elephant poo pulp is then spun around for about three hours to cut the fibers.

Then, color is added depending on the color the finished paper is supposed to have. Given that this is such a natural process, only natural dyes and colors should be used. Natural vegetative binding agents, for example, or water-soluble salt dyes are great. Then, the pulp is shaped into balls of equal size and sifted evenly onto large frames.

Photo: Colin & Sarah Northway

These dry in the sun and after all the moisture has evaporated – voila, there’s your colored sheet of paper! Now it just needs to be sanded so that it has a smoother surface. Then, it is cut into the desired size and shape so that it can be assembled into letter paper, note pads, greeting cards and more. Done! How neat is that?

Photo: Justin Baeder 

But it gets even better. Initiatives like Mr. Ellie Pooh LLC not only make beautiful paper products, they also work on establishing local industries out of this process that will help improve elephant-human interactions. Currently, many elephants are killed because they are “in the way” of agriculture and other projects but once they are part of the industry as one of the main suppliers of the raw material, they will be seen as an asset rather than a threat and treated with respect. Inspiring to say the least! Now if only human poo were as useful.

Trash into Treasure: Recycled Robo Planters Bring Old Gadgets Back to Life

Photo: Mario Caicedo Langer

For Colombian artist and sculptor Mario Caicedo Langer, gadgets don’t just die once they cease to fulfil their intended functions as shavers, joysticks, computers and what not. Even more mundane objects like picture frames, coffee filters and old deodorant bottles are not safe from Mario. He takes metallic, inorganic objects and turns them into functional, organic sculptures. 

Though at times a bit menacing-looking, his Robo Planter series is anything but. In fact, the artist literally breathed new life into these objects that many would simply regard as trash by filling them with plants. Lucky bamboo, cacti and creepers happily flourish in their unusual pots.

Planter Man, seen here, for example, was made out of a broken coffee filter, old knobs, roll-on deodorant balls (for the eyes), the nozzle from a damaged heat gun and a plastic cap that doubles as a hand. Really cool, creative and inspiring! In fact, we’d strongly suggest taking a look at Mario’s flickr stream for more inspiration.