In honour of International Women’s Day yesterday, we’re having a week of women’s health and sexual health themed posts here on Recycle This – with lots of related giveaways.

Yesterday, we were talking about how great reusable, washable sanitary towels are – much better for your body, your wallet and the environment than plastic disposable ones. Rachael from Moon Times has given us some wonderful handmade, super-soft pads to give away – if you’d like to be in the draw, just leave a comment on that article before Friday lunchtime (GMT).

But I know there are a good number of crafty people here who would prefer to make their own – and would prefer to make them by reusing and recycling old fabrics that might otherwise go to waste. Our grandmothers would probably have made them out of old sheets and the like but jersey cotton fabrics from old tshirts or baby clothes are probably better now – very widely available, thicker more absorbent and softer too.

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen knitted or crocheted pads too – although I can’t any details now — does anyone know anything about making those?

Has anyone got any patterns or had any experience of making their own? Anything to try? Anything to avoid? Is it worth adding wings and if so, what fixing works best? Any suggestions welcome!

Oh and stay tuned – I’ve got another giveaway for later today!

(We all wear white jeans while on our periods, don’t we?)

We all know wrapping paper is bad, m’okay? and that reusable gift bags are a far better alternative if you go in for that type of presentation and reusable gifts bags made out of recycled stuff from around the home are better yet – but how do you make them?

I wanted to make a gift bag in a hurry the other day out of some old brown paper. A quick search pointed me towards a number of tutorials which used existing boxes as templates – either intact boxes or as nets – but I wondered if anyone else had any other designs?

Another idea I had was to make a quick pouch out of a pretty fabric – or even just fold the fabric furoshiki style.

Any other suggestions?

We’ve had an email from Kenny that I’m sure some of you will be able to help with:

I teach art in Glasgow and I’m trying to find some way of punching disc of various diameters (eg.10mm 15mm 22mm 30mm) out of recycled plastic, fabric, paper etc. to make jewellery. Any suggestions?

The ring-binder size metal ones, like one in the picture, work fine for small circles, but only small discs about 5mm in diameter. I tried using fancier shaped/bigger hole punches with thin plastic but because the ones I had were designed for thick paper/card, the plastic kept gumming them up. Alison Bailey Smith has more luck than me with that sort of thing though and recommends a particular brand of hole punch – X Cut.

Are there any alternatives to using punches? What are the options for bigger circles? Anything quicker/more accurate than just cutting them out with scissors?

Punching holes in fabric other than felt (and the like) may cause a fraying problem, which might ruin/reduce the lifespan of the garment. Any ways around that or other advice?

As I mentioned in reply to Charlotte yesterday, I recently read about the concept of aquaponics and was quickly smitten – another thing for my endless “cool things to do in the garden” list. It’s a good job it’s a pretty big garden.

The idea is that you have a mutually beneficial veg bed and fish tank – the fish dirty up the water with lots of valuable nutrients (poop nutrients = pootrients) which is pumped up to fertilise the gravel-bottomed veg bed. The gravel works as a filter, keeping the nutrients & other gunk to feed the plants while the excess clean water is returned tank to begin the process again. Smaller tanks are probably only suitable for small ornament fish but you can grow your own freshwater swimmers in larger ones – an alternative to keeping chickens in the garden!

Has anyone already played with aquaponics on a small/domestic scale? Did you make your own system or did you buy a ready-made one/components? If you made your own, what did you use?

I don’t think we’ll have the time to build a system for quite a while (so many other things to do first!) but it makes sense to start collecting items we can reuse when we see them – I suspect something to use as a tank will be the most difficult part find – any ideas?

Compared to our old tiny yard, we’ve got a pretty big garden now but not that many flower beds – and the previous owners hinted that the beds we have got aren’t that deep (even though some of them are already raised) because the entire garden is built on, essentially, a cliff face. The rock is handy as it stops our house from sliding down the hill into the beck but it means my root veg will have to grow in containers instead.

I plan to scavenge some round tubs from somewhere – old plastic barrels or the like – but I’d like some nicer planters – probably trough/window-box shaped – for on the balcony/patio bit, and for the slither of space between the front of our house and the road. They don’t all need to be deep enough for root veg as I want to grow plenty of above ground stuff too.

My father-in-love has suggested making them out of scraps of decking – a box with decking for sides – but any other suggestions?