Lifestyle
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“If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way” - Napoleon Hill |
Welcome to Piccola Idea
We are Sheila & Giulio, creatives who enjoy a practical project.
Piccola Idea translates from Italian into Scottish as Wee Idea.
Piccola Idea began as a creative outlet during a hectic period of living and working in London; Giulio as a baker, Sheila as a theatre performer. A humble upcycling craft venture from the kitchen table, and later, a council garage rented as a workshop.
We developed a passion for salvaging, restoring and redesigning unwanted items. Rescuing once-loved objects and giving them a new lease of life by transforming them into something useful. Every week we combed London's flea markets, car boot sales, charity shops, and online markets. Sometimes treasures were simply found dumped in the streets. London is great for that!
Kick scooters or public transport were our modes of getting from A to B in London, so many of the bulky finds, headboards, chairs, marble tables, endured an awkward ride home.
We set up an online shop selling our farm-crate chalkboards, vintage suitcase shelving, lamps made from old utility objects, and personalised greeting cards from recycled materials.
Despite paying extortionate rent for a dirty garage that had no electricity for power tools, we loved this simple first chapter in our story.
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| Garage workshop |
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| Park workshop - weather permitting! |
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PROJECTS
Our collection of work is varied and involves mixed materials.
Nowadays Piccola Idea has grown into a concept to live life by. We have witnessed that seemingly insignificant wee ideas can grow into much larger impactful ones, and thus began to closely examine our daily choices and actions, how they ripple out to affect others and the environment.
Turning the concept upside-down to examine the Grande Idea, we also draw great inspiration from larger global concepts and figure out how they can be descaled to smaller manageable ideas applicable to everyday life.
We continue to restore and make our furniture and household items, but the Piccola Idea concept has firmly changed the way in which we live.
Areas have included:
📺 moving away from mass consumerism
🐄 reduced consumption of animal products
🚯 strict plastic reduction
🚿 DIY toiletries & household cleaning products
🏦 researching transparency of bank & energy providers' ethical policies
✂ sewing to make soft furnishings & mend clothes
🏪 avoiding supermarkets
🍎 eating seasonally & from local producers
👕 wearing secondhand clothing
🌿 spending majority of time in nature
👀 researching backstories of every purchased item
🌲 planting a grove of trees in Scottish highlands to re-wild & off-set carbon footprint
(*As birthday presents for family & friends, a tree is planted in their name. See charity Trees for Life. )
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CHOICES
These shifts have been a gradual step-by-step process over years; gentle swaps to develop less negatively impactful habits.
The most significant switch of all is the mentality of thoughtful purchasing.
Before buying an item, time is spent researching the company's ethics:
how materials are grown/sourced, supply chain, if workers receive a fair wage, how funds are invested. This includes anything from a jar of spices to a pair of shoes.
After having personally met low-income workers caught up in poor trading standards, it becomes an impossible situation to ignore.
We all show direct support through our purchases. Voting with our money.
Although it can feel uncomfortable to the point we'd rather just cover our eyes & ears, there are hundreds of kinder alternatives to our favorite commercial companies.
There is no denying this level of research is initially time-consuming. Furthermore, a fair amount of patience is required to make positive habits stick, but once they have, it becomes easier and quicker to find companies we are happy to continue supporting.
These conscious choices form part of Piccola Idea's future master plan to live more simply and sustainably.
But we still have some distance to go to live the lifestyle we dream of.
Longer-term goals we are working towards involve:
🏡 renovating an old building with reclaimed materials
💦 water management and re-use
🌞 green energy
🍇 growing food
🏃 greener modes of travel
We are all work in progress. Watch this space...
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| DIY toiletries |
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| Handmade soaps |
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| DIY cleaning products |
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CONTENT
This blog is a collection of creative ideas, DIY projects to try, dance empowerment & education, and stories of the inspirational humans we've connected with on travels. Each encounter taught us a special lesson, skill, or mentality, that we carry in our hearts.
Find out more under Creative Dance & Travel Stories.
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| Weaving bamboo with Ambili Uravu rural empowerment centre, Wayanad, India |
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| Learning to work clay with potter Paruth Hann, Siem Reap, Cambodia ________________________________________ |
Discussions in our blog cover how it is possible to live a more creatively full life, benefitting:
🌎 the environment
👫 our fellow Earth citizens
💷 our pockets
and ultimately,
😊 our collective happiness
Some find our lifestyle slightly extreme, questioning why bother, one person can't change the world, but this philosophy is ages old. Our ancestors were innately resourceful and possessed a stronger sense of connection, deeper knowledge and respect for nature.
Our collective society is losing these precious skills as our lives accelerate at lightening pace, full of excess, noise and distraction. We have become complacent, sauntering down the path of comfort and convenience, acting without much thought of the consequences.
Piccola Idea's interests simply lie in slowing down, observing, minimising, getting back in touch with nature, developing useful habits and un-learning bad habits.
Nature is a wonderful teacher. It would do us all good to take a seat in her classroom 🌿
We invite you to join Piccola Idea & share your stories of positive simple change.
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| Lipton's Seat, Haputale, Sri Lanka |
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