‘Creative reuse centers’ open across Roanoke.
Written & Photographed By Christina Nifong / Photo Above: Workshops offered at the Scrap Collective aim to make creative use of donated items and also to teach life skills, such as clothes mending.
Behind a rollup garage door, in a former welder’s shop in downtown Roanoke, lies a treasure: Fragments of bright fabric. Skeins of yarn. Paints. Stencils. Magazines. Beads. Glass jars. Shells. Bottle caps. Aluminum cans.
All of it donated. All of it for sale—cheap. Scissors, colored pencils, crayons–as many as shoppers can stuff into a lunch sack—for $4. Gift bags, 10 cents each. Odds and ends? Name your price.
The idea is simple. Artists often find themselves with more thread, canvases, glue than they need. Makers, teachers, and parents are on the hunt for inexpensive materials. Add in the recent closures of stores like JO-ANNs and A.C. Moore. Plus the collapse of municipal recycling programs. The time was right for the resurgence of a concept first floated in the 1970s: “creative reuse centers.” Or, simply, thrift stores for craft supplies.
“With the changing economy, everyone is having to stretch everything further,” said Scrap Collective director of operations and former art teacher Amanda Barbee. “And when you realize that, you also look at the stuff you have an excess of, and you’re like, ‘Gosh, I just know somebody else could make use of it. It’s been sitting in my house for years.’”
Roanoke has seen a wave of creative reuse centers open in the last 18 months: Kathryn Ecsedy launched Dragon Bite Books & Crafts in Roanoke County, selling second-hand books and craft supplies in a cute log cabin off Franklin Road. Garbrielle King (plus Sebastian Harlow and Robert McAden) started Arts Marts, a closet-sized space on Church Avenue, as an extension of The Slap Shop, her pottery studio and store. The Scrap Collective has the most expansive offerings, including a tool library, a system of weighing how much waste is diverted from landfills (5,229 pounds as of mid-April), and a robust calendar of classes, workshops, and summer camps.
“People are realizing that there are good channels with which to disperse and redisperse things,” Barbee said. “It has been really great to see.”
Find out more about each creative reuse center at: artsmarts.co, DragonBiteBooks.com, and scrapcollective.org.
The story above first appeared in our July/August 2026 issue.
