I love the way some creative minds uses worthless waste to create beautiful things. It’s like they take what you throw out one day, and sell it back to you the next day, only it looks fantastic when you buy it back! It’s ingenious!

Wee Can Shop has a great selection of recycled accessories. They’ve got trendy bags, purses, coin pouches and jewelry, all made out of recycled materials.

Soda Can Necklaces

One of Wee Can Shop’s wonderful recycled accessories are the Soda Can Necklaces. They are colorful and eye-catching and shows clearly how “one man’s junk is another man’s gold”. The necklaces are available in three different designs and they are all handmade from soda cans.

The Soda Can Necklaces cost USD 14.99 a piece.

Ecoist

Ecoist is one of the most creative and environmentally friendly labels Wee Can Shop has to offer. Ecoist make accessories from soda cans, candy wrappers, newspapers and food packaging, and takes advantage of the original colors and textures of the materials in making their products. Fair Trade manufacturers make Ecoist’s accessories, and unbelievably enough; one tree is planted for each product sold.

Ecoist bracelets cost USD 11.99, coin pouches costs USD 21.99/25.99 and wristlets, handbags and shoulder bags costs between USD 27.99 and 47.99.

Besides the recycled gifts and accessories Wee Can Shop can offer, they have lots of other cool gifts for kids as well. For instance they have the Constuction Eating Kit, String Dolls and “Frozen Smiles” denture ice cubes.

Giveaway - Win A Soda Can Necklace!

Wee Can Shop has been generous enough to give away three Soda Can Necklaces to my readers. The lucky winners will be able to choose freely between the three different designs, Dr. Pepper, Coca Cola and Diet Coke.

If you’d like to enter the Soda Can Necklace giveaway, all you need to do is to send an email to marianne@alifemoreinteressting.com, with your name, address and choice of necklace.

Last chance to enter the giveaway is June 5th.

Note: Your information will be used for this giveaway only, and will not be shared with anyone. Only US citizens can enter the giveaway, and only one submission from each household will be accepted.

I love wooden toys, especially wooden toys of high quality that can be passed down from generation to generation. Here is a list of a few of my favorite wooden toys.

Pastel Toys

Pastel Toys are heirloom quality wooden toys handmade by disabled adults at their own self-sustaining community, a kibbutz, in Israel. It is quite a special community which manages to make the life of these disabled adults rich and meaningful by giving them work they can manage, somewhere to live and support from a community of people with similar situations as their own. So Pastel Toys are not only beautiful fresh colored wooden toys, but also a product of a community well worth supporting. Many of Pastel Toys products can be found at Giggle. (Enter “Pastel Toys” in the search field.)

Pintoy

Pintoy construction toys look beautiful with their natural and painted wood. There is everything needed to create a great big construction site in this series; a crane, a digger, a dumper truck, loaders, trailers, a set of construction equipments consisting of pneumatic drills, compactor and Compressor, wheelbarrow, pick and shovel, 2 traffic cones and 2 barriers. There is also a set of workers consisting of three workers and a Forman. You’ll find the Pintoy construction toys at Just Playing Toys.

Heirloom Rattles

A nice wooden heirloom rattle, that will last a lifetime and can be inherited by the baby’s own kids, and grandkids, in the future, is priceless. The walnut wood rattle from Nico & Zoe and the handmade heirloom hardwood rattle from A Toy Garden, are both simple, beautiful rattles made by natural wood, with round shapes and smooth surfaces. These are great ideas for baby gifts if you’d like the gift to stay in the kid’s family for generations.

Ostheimer

Ostheimer keeps the feel and look of wood in their toys, by only applying transparent paints and not totally rounding the figures edges. The surfaces of the toys are still smooth and soft to handle. Ostheimer wants kids to use and develop their imaginative abilities when playing with their toys, and this is why the silhouettes of all the figures are simple, and the details are very few. In this way they create a perfect environment for the kids to play in, without giving all the details, so the kids mind will work on creating their own little world for the figures! Ostheimers figures can be found at Myriad Natural Toys & Crafts. The Nativity story figures could make perfect gifts for the advent calendar, resulting in a beautiful Nativity scenery Chritmas eve.

Sevi

The well-known company Sevi has long traditions in making quality toys. Amongst their selection in wooden toys they have series of musical instruments. The instruments are colorful and full of cute details. You can find the Sevi instruments and other toys by Sevi at Au Bois Jouli.

Eco-friendly Wooden Puzzle Toys

The smooth, round edged wooden puzzle toys from Craftbury Kids are so elegant end cute, and will look fantastic on the shelf if the nursery or kids room. The natural wood is beautiful, but if you desire some colors, you could paint the different pieces in different colors of tox-free paint yourself! These puzzle toys are available in Pig, Tortoise, Rabbit, Lion, Cow with calf, Ocean with boat and fishes and Farmhouse with animals and a field with trees.

Skipper Pirate Yacht

Graham And Green has an aesthetic pirate-themed traditional wooden toy yacht. It is made from plantation grown hardwood and sail is made from genuine sailcloth. It is a beautiful toy of fine quality. (Via Notcot.)

Plan Toys

Plan Toys in general are great toys. I love the look of Plan Toys, and the attention the company gives to detail in their toys. They simply make beautiful designed children’s toys with a very modern touch. Oompa Toys has a great selection of Plan Toys.

I simply love these shower curtains! Besides being functional and environmentally friendly, they also provide the kids with something fun to look at and lots of educational information.

Kids love to explore and discover stuff all by themselves, and that is why I think these shower curtains are so great. They provide a brilliant way of feeding the little ones information by surrounding them with it in a colorful and fun way. It’s a superb way of tricking them into learning new stuff.

You’ll find lots of different educational shower curtains at Simple Memory Art.

Thanks to Cynthia for the tip! She and her children have first hand experience with these shower curtains, and think they are great.

Fun and colorful bracelets made from silver and beer/soda cans. The soda and beer can pieces are secured to the bracelets with sterling silver rivets, and silver end caps protect the ends.

There are a few different versions to choose from, e.g. Lucky Lager, Coca Cola, Sunkist, Guinness, Dr. Pepper and Tab.

Since the bracelets are made from actual cans you can rest assured that you are doing your bit to “staying green” so they offer both a stylish way of showing your taste in both beverage and your environmental consciousness. Very treehugging.

The bracelets are made in Vermont and can be found at Elsewares along with a wider version of the cuffs along with matching rings.

Littlearth makes purses and accessories from old license plates, tire rubber and bottle caps. Although not all material used in their products are recycled, they have an admirable aim to use an average of 50% recycled material in their products.

Besides the ones which still resemble license plates, there are lots of purses with beautiful graphics and some are even adorned with Swarovski crystals.

In one of their lines, Pro•FAN•ity, they use the graphics of the 32 NFL teams. The line consists of purses, CD holders, photo holders and auto seatbelts amongst other products. The line is perfect for girls who want to be fashionable while supporting their teams.

The shoe company Simple creates… shoes. Duh. Well they’re pretty cool and the great thing about all their products is that they are all 100% sustainable.

The last couple of years there has been a lot of focus on sustainable production methods due to the attention around the global warming problem and because it’s simply the right thing to do. Consequently we see more and more companies like Simple, dedicated to making sustainable and/or organic products, making it easier for us to make a difference by simply choosing the right products which harm the environment the least.

Some of the materials used in Simples products are organic cotton, recycled tires, recycled bottles, PET packaging, bamboo and jute. Each product on their site has detailed information on which materials were used.

Simple also makes playground balls and caps for kids, and shoes, bags and caps for woman and men. See all the their sustainable products at Simple.

Via Tot Trends Weekly Magazine