America Recycles Day: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Recreate!

Today is America Recycles Day, a nationally-recognized, annual celebration which promotes recycling programs and practices. Slowly but surely, the attention has paid off. In 2007, it was proven that the amount of waste disposed straight to landfills has decreased from 89% to 54% over the past 30 years! In honor of America Recycles Day, The Giggle Guide^® is featuring terrific children’s products fromTwirls & Twigs, Lisa Austin Design, and Nahui Ollin. These companies reuse a variety of materials to create purses, headbands, bracelets, wallets, dresses, shirts, and baby blankets and more!

Twirls & Twigs Spins with Sustainable Fashions

Shawna Dalton, creator of Twirls & Twigs, was having such a hard time finding mindful, eco-friendly fashions for her children that she simply decided to fill that void herself. Using sustainable fabrics and fibers, left-over designer materials, recycled cotton, and even plastic bottles (for one particular “Russian doll” dress), she created a line of clothing inspired by her admiration for the natural world and love of all things twirling, whirling and whimsical.

Twirls & Twigs products include: baby blankets bedecked with porcupines, elephants, puppies and owls; boys’ shirts with dinosaurs, alligators, and rockets printed on the front; and playful girls’ dresses in pinks, browns, blues, blacks, and reds, featuring lace trims and smocked fronts. The finishing touches of bows, frills, stripes, flowers and ruffles make these beautiful dresses come alive with fanciful fun! The style is unconventional, yet elegant — embodying the idea of ‘twirl’ as much as possible. The patterns on the dresses tend to be angled, and positioned on the sides of the dresses instead of being sewn onto the traditional front and center.

Help our world, and your fashion scene, spin a little brighter at www.twirlsandtwigs.com

Lisa Austin Design is Sweet on M&M Wallets and Mike and Ike Headbands

Especially after Halloween, used candy wrappers pile up inside garbage trucks, recycling bins, under kids’ beds and at the bottom of backpacks. It does seem a waste that such internationally recognizable designs should be so easily disposed. What is other people’s trash has become Lisa Austin’s sweet success! Lisa Austin Design creates functional items out of, or decorated with, candy wrappers!

The creative array includes 2” and 1”-wide headbands ($12 each) decorated with Milk Duds, Razzles, Fruit Tootsie Roll, Now and Later, and Dubble Bubble wrappers. Checkbook covers ($17 each) are decorated with Hot Tamales Ice, Whoppers, Twizzlers, Sierra Mist, Diet Coke, Mike and Ike, Milk Duds, Sugar Babies, Kit Kat, Hot Tamales, Reese’s, Pepsi, Twinkies, Andes Mints, Twix, and Dots. Wallets ($15) and purses ($33) are made with wrappers and packaging from Teddy Grahams, Hershey’s Candy, Jolly Rancher, Mike and Ike, M&M Peanut, and 3 Musketeers.

For a full assortment of sustainable tricks and treats, contact

Nahui Ollin Designs Bags of Candy Wraps!

Keeping with the candy theme, Nahui Ollin (now-we-oh-lean) was created in 2003 by Olga Abadi after she learned, at a festival, an ancient Mayan technique of constructing common materials into bags. Learning this technique made it more than possible to create fashionable totes without toxic chemicals or promoting the emission of them.

Eco-chic is hot, and Olga Abadi recognized her opportunity and made it her niche. Each candy-wrapper bag is created from recycled materials; unused candy wrappers, gum wrappers, and soda bottle labels are saved from the jaws of the landfill and instead, created into a sharp looking clutch, posh “Mary Poppins’” bag, or a hip keychain. Bags are available in assorted colors and styles, such as Comic and Newsprint, Tootsie Pop, Tutti Frutti, Peace and Love, and Black and White. For every bag, up to four thousand wrappers and four days of work go into the process. Retail prices range from $10 to $200.

Nahui Ollin follows Fair Trade and Sweatshop Free practices in Mexico, and Tootsie, Disney, Hershey’s, Pez and Target have all become partners of the project. With such cooperation, Nahui Ollin has been able to support the artisans who work for her.

Get on the recycled brand wagon at www.nahuiollin.com