Hi everyone! Welcome back to our green week!

Today Aaron is here to share some more information on Hero Arts’ green business practices, including the company’s commitment to solar energy and recycling.  Take it away, Aaron!

“In 2004, Hero Arts installed a solar panel array on its woodblock cutting facility to generate clean power for its operations. The 68 kW array, large enough to power 70 homes, was at the time the largest privately-owned array in the western United States.

If you walk through the Hero Arts plant, you will notice lights turning off behind you, if they are on at all. There are recycling bins for bottles, cans and paper, as well as for rubber, matting and packaging materials. Plus, most of the packaging materials used are already made of recycled material.

Hero Arts also asks its suppliers to sign a “Green Pledge,” encouraging them to run their own businesses as green as possible.

In some cases it just costs less and makes a better product. In that case, why not use recycled materials and materials with fewer chemicals? It makes good sense for the customer, for the environment, and for business.”

Now onto today’s green project (plus video!), brought to you courtesy of Web Artist Laura Griffin. Just wait until you see the magic she works with polymer clay, stamps, and a candy tin — it’s incredible!

Laura says, “During green week, I was thinking of some of the ways we can turn our trash into treasure. How about an old Altoid tin getting a new life as an embellishment holder? This tin was altered using two of my favorite things: Hero Arts rubber stamps and polymer clay. They work great together! Check out today’s video for some tips and techniques on working with both mediums. And don’t stop with just circle Altoid tins…what about the heart and rectangle shaped ones? They could see new lives as gift card holders, Valentine’s Day boxes, and the list goes on…”

Supplies:

• Young Deer
• Clouds
• Anytime Messages
• Other: pasta machine, clay blade, acrylic roller, Premo! polymer clay in white, gold, pearl blue, & pearl green, brown acrylic paint, damp paper towel, empty Altoid tin

Laura’s Tips:

• Mist your stamps with water before pressing them into clay to act as a release agent.
• Add acrylic paint to your baked clay to make the images pop.
• If you have trouble getting clay into all the crevices, try using a thin permanent marker instead.

Thank you Laura! Your tin is amazing and it’s so neat to see stamps and polymer clay used together!

Enabling Alert: All of the stamps Laura used on her project today are available HERE in the Hero Arts Online Store.

I hope you are having fun coming up with some green projects of your own for the challenge!  I’ve seen some awesome submissions over at Flickr so far! Remember, you have until this Sunday, May 24 to submit your entries.  (Check Monday’s post HERE for complete challenge details.)

Filed under: gogreen

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 at 5:32 am and is filed under Watch It Wednesdays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.