2012 Summit of Awesome: A Crafty Business Camp

If you’ve been following Crafting a Green World for a while, I’m sure you’ve seen us talk about The Summit of Awesome. My friend and site co-director Kelly Rand is one of the organizers, and I’ve spoken a few times on the conference’s Green Crafts panel.

This year, Hello Craft – the organization that plans the Summit of Awesome – released a brand new book on launching a crafty biz, so rather than a full-blown, multi-day event, this year’s Summit is a one day Business Camp workshop. If you run a crafty business or have been wanting to launch your hobby into a money-making venture, you should definitely check it out!

Hello Craft’s mission is to support the handmade community, and at each conference they have experts from the crafty community sharing their knowledge in talks, panels, and workshops. Here’s a video from the 2010 Summit in Portland, Oregon:

This year’s Summit of Awesome will be on Saturday, September 8 at Fab Lab DC (1418 North Capitol Street NW, Washington, DC 20002). Early bird registration is live now, so if you want to register at a discount, head on over to the Hello Craft website!

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What to do with a Wooden Pallet: 6 Crafty Projects

My favorite thing about crafting with wooden pallets is the aged, worn, antique look to the wood. It gives the results so much personality!

Actually, my favorite thing about crafting with wooden pallets is the fact that I’m upcycling–I don’t worry about the wood’s provenance when I’m rescuing it.

No, wait–my REAL favorite thing about crafting with wooden pallets is the price tag; businesses where I live are perfectly happy to simply give them away, which means that I can work wood projects for free.

Whatever YOUR favorite reasons are for crafting with wooden pallets, check out the following gorgeous, useful, DIY projects:

Before you begin each project, you have to two two things with each wooden pallet:

Disassemble the pallet. Unless you’re using the entire pallet AS a pallet, you’ve got to take it apart without tearing it all to pieces. Although you can, of course, hack your wooden pallet apart any way that you’re able, I especially appreciate this method for disassembling a pallet from Dishfunctional Designs because it’s so careful, resulting in very little waste.Seal for safety. Shipping pallets are not, in general, safe; among the other dangers of shipping pallets are their possible exposure to chemicals such as insecticides or preservatives. However, this does not rule them out as a craft supply–this simply means that you must seal them completely so that anything toxic stays inside. I usually seal the finished product, rather than the individual disassembled pieces, and although I do permit my children to craft with me, they’re not particularly sensitive to chemicals, and I require them to wash their hands afterwards.

Now, let’s create!

Next Page: 6 Wood Pallet Craft Projects

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