1 Happy Easter Photo Card, Paper Culture
2 Eco Plastic Easter Eggs, Eco Eggs filled with jellybeans
3 Painterly Pastel Eggs DIY Tutorial, Papernstitch
4 Porcelain Egg Candles, Revisions Design Studio
5 Milk bottles, Acme Party Box Company with striped paper straws, Just Artifacts
6 Fun table setting with kraft table runner, chalk drawn utensils and colorful confetti
* To view images of our spring inspiration, visit our Pinterest boards.

For an eco-friendly way to set up a fun table setting, bring in Kraft paper as a table cloth that will entertain both kids and adults. Using chalk, you can draw utensil outlines as well as provide an artsy alternative for guests to draw on the paper. Scatter the tops with colorful confetti in spring shades of mint green, coral pink and canary yellow. Not only will this brighten up your Sunday brunch, but also your Easter egg dying station. For beverages and things, we like to reuse jars and bottles like the milk bottles from Acme and accent them with paper straws (always eco chic!) in the chosen color scheme.

A good way to emphasize recycling materials is to bring them to life in new settings. In addition to using eggs to dip and dye, try using them as candles. You can break them in half, pour in soy wax and light them. Or, if you rather save your eggs for your traditional hunt, go ahead and check out Revisions Design Studio’s porcelain egg candles with soy wax! They’ve already done the job for you so you can buy them as is and set them up for your tablescape.

As an eco-friendly business, we like to support all things that help out Mother Earth, so we were extremely egg-static when we saw these eco plastic Easter eggs from Eco Eggs, which are made with corn and are completely compostable. You can use them as favors filed with jellybeans for a more casual spring party or even hide them with little prizes and treats for the little ones for their Easter egg hunt. Cap off your party by sending your guests away with one of our fun spring themed Easter cards from your family thanking them for hopping along to your party to usher in Spring and to celebrate this season with all its promises of new life.

It’s that time of the year again when you’ve got to decide whether or not to order holiday cards. Personally I get sad every year receiving fewer and fewer cards in the mail. There’s nothing quite like coming home to a full mailbox of holiday greetings and warm messages from friends letting me know how their year went. E-cards just don’t hold the same weight, literally and figuratively. Living in a time where e-mails are replaced by short tweets or Facebook messages, it’s often easy to forget how nice it can be do get a real card in the mail.

If you do send cards out this year, we recommend choosing a company that gives back. Not to toot our own horn, but Paper Culture plants a tree in your honor for every order.  If you want to skip the gift-giving this year, plant a tree for someone instead with a beautifully designed card. Now’s the best time to shop with a final sitewide sale of up to 50% off. There are many other companies that give percentages of the cards to charity. Choose a card design that reflects your style and personality. Consider adding a recently holiday photo. And most importantly, add a few lines of holiday cheer to let your lucky recipient know you’ve been thinking about there. Here’s to a happy and safe holiday season for all!

If there’s one thing we love it’s paper. And we especially love when people turn it into art. One new artist takes it well beyond origami, creating gorgeous 3-D art out of recycled paper. Ali Golzad is an artist living in Texas, originally from Göteborg, Sweden by way of Tehran, Iran. With a background as a graphic designer and creative director, his latest project asks us to question how we normally look at waste and see something beautiful: “Over the years I have developed my own technique using various mediums,” he says. “Aside from my formal graphic design training and time spent as a Creative Director you could say I am a self taught artist. My urge to create while still caring for our planet enabled me to look at ordinary objects in a new light and transform these commonly discarded materials into something meaningful.” We love the innovative use of paper techniques to recreate well-known figures. More pictures after the jump.

We recently showed you our favorite DIY paper masks for Halloween. But what if you have a newborn and don’t want to throw away money for a costume on year zero? Fortunately all you need to celebrate the holiday with your newborn is an old onesie, a scrap of fabric, and some. Check out Rachel Low’s costume templates to turn any onesie into a fun costume. You can even increase the pattern size with your printer and make a matching sweatshirt to wear out trick-or-treating.

Our favorite is the skeleton template, complete with a little heartbeat. Or choose between a jack-o-lantern or ghost for more fun. You can use either a simple thread and needle to sew the pieces on, or, if you’re like most new moms, extremely pressed for time, fabric glue works just as well. And if you have artistic inclinations, you can turn any white onesie into a costume. Imagine drawing a Frankenstein or witch’s face with fabric pens. Don’t stress out this Halloween. Just find 20 minutes to spare and you’re ready to go.

With 85% of textile waste going to landfills every year, Halloween can have a devastating effect on the environment. While it’s tons of fun to pick out a costume and dress up, any family can make a night of crafting DIY costumes, and avoid creating unnecessary waste. Look around for wornout clothes, old sweats, or too-small garments. Many of today’s costumes can be made by hand if you have a sewing machine. Or if you truly want to make something easy, consider making an easy paper mask to wear on top of a colorful outfit. Paper masks can be tons of fun for kids and adults to wear. There are lots of sites that offer outlines for you to print out. Just color them in, add some sequins and glitter and you’re ready to go.  For masquerade style, glue it onto a stick, or for easy-wear just add an elastic band.

The great site Cool Mom Picks has rounded up their favorite online patterns. There are six fright-ready choices available at Mr. Printables, including a black cat, jack-o-lantern, skull and spider. They’re free to download. The patterns can also be used to make longer-lasting felt masks. The cutest patterns online are hands-down Wee Society’s DIY Wee Alphas, which are free cutouts that can be pasted onto a brown paper bag. These little bags are the complete costume. Choose between an owl, lion, fox and gorilla. For a more fancy option, Etsy store Shades of Every Color offers digital downloads for $3.99 each. Choose between full-color printouts of a peacock, owl, or deer. And if you’re feeling inspired, just take out some cardboard and markers and get to work.

Amazon.com, the king of all super convenient e-commerce sites, has launched a new online site dedicated to all things eco-friendly and green: vine.com. The site sells earth-friendly products at super friendly prices across home and beauty, kids and babies, pets, apparel, grocery and more. But the best feature is when you use a coupon code when checking out (HEALTHYCHILD10), you’ll get $10 off your order, free shipping, and vine.com will donate $10 to Healthy Child Healthy World. Everybody wins.

Healthy Child Healthy World is a nonprofit very dear to Paper Culture’s heart. We made holiday cards to benefit the organization, while educating consumers on how to have a safer, healthier home. Healthy Child Healthy World has been around for 20 years, working to teach families about the link between a child’s health and the environment. Not to mention they have a great website with daily ideas about improving our child’s health. Vine.com seems like a can’t-beat combination. Next time you do your weekly shopping check it out and make a free donation to an amazing charity.

It started as a Kickstarter campaign. Designer David Mayer set out to create the perfect water bottle. The result is a square bottle that never rolls. Although the stainless steel bottle looks simple enough, it’s made from 16 different parts, in a process of 65 steps. Best of all, the bottle has a top and bottom lid that can be removed for easy cleaning. That comes in handy especially if you’re the type to tote around juice or smoothies and know the annoyance of washing a regular bottle.

“My goal is really to get people thinking about bottles not as these clunky, utilitarian pieces, but as statements–in the same way women think about handbags and shoes and that we all think about our clothes, watches and sunglasses,” he told Co.Design. “The bottle is one of the most visible things we use–there is absolutely no reason that it shouldn’t be beautiful, iconic and send a message to people about who we are.” Retailing for $40, the Square is an ultra-premium water bottle. It’s pricey, but if it’s the last water bottle you’ll ever need, it will be well worth it over the years. The BPA-free bottle is leak-proof and guaranteed for life. Check it out here.

These days when it comes to getting around in big cities, owning a car is no longer necessary. From Zipcar to DriveNow, there are tons of easy ways to just jump in a car whenever you need to run an errand, take a day trip, or go shopping. The ease of car sharing coupled with public transportation proves a great alternative to owning a car. But now one company has taken eco-friendly transportation a step further in San Francisco, a hotbed of transportation innovation. Enter Scoot Networks, a new electric scooter sharing system that allows for ultimate mobility.

The service is simple. Use the smartphone app to locate one of the 50 electric scooters spread out around San Francisco. Each scooter has a smartphone dock. Place your smartphone in the dock to unlock the scooter and go for a ride. Your smartphone turns into a dashboard offering GPS and ride info. No reservations necessary. The only catch is training is required for all riders. Rental fees are $5 an hour, or $10 for flat rate overnight use, much less than any car rental program, and akin to renting a bike. Would you try Scoot Networks if it were available in your city?

There’s no shortage of portable speakers on the market. But it’s hard to find ones that aren’t bulky or battery-draining. Designers Lin Nien-An and Cheng Ya-Fang have found the answer, creating the funnel-inspired Green’s Voice Speaker System, that turns any empty plastic bottle into a party. It’s the perfect picnic accessory this fall.

Just screw the rubber cradle onto the top of a used bottle. The speaker creates a beautiful low-tech sound, using the bottle as an enclosure to amplify the sound. The Green speakers are made from an environmentally friendly, biodegradable plastic, and the long-life battery lasts 10 times that of an average lithium battery. These smart speakers give a whole new meaning to music on-the-go. Keep them on hand, and you’ll be prepared for any spontaneous party that comes your way.

If you find yourself sitting in front of a computer for eight hours a day or more, longing to be out in nature, perhaps a desk makeover might help lift your spirits. The new Orée Board is an eco-designed keyboard fashioned from a single piece of wood, offering a warmer desktop experience for the user. The name has a double meaning: “the outer edge of the forest” and “the brink of something new.” Orée chooses wood varieties from sustainably managed forests, offering natural and renewable material sources with each product. Each board is cut into three sheets to preserve the wood grain and minimize waste.

But as outdoorsy as it looks, the Orée Board is highly functional, powered by a Bluetooth 3.0 chipset to link to your computer. You can even customize the keyboard by choosing a unique font. In a world surrounded by technology, sometimes it only takes a few details to bring us back to nature. Try adding a few eco-friendly products to your work station along with a selection of desktop plants. The constant influence of nature throughout your workday will do wonders for your state-of-mind, and serve as a gentle reminder that it’s time to get outside, as often as you can.