Recycled Junk Mail Folk Art
One of the ways we have reclaimed some of the advertising brochures and junk mail around our home is to make paper-mache items. One of our favorite items we make are masks and wall plaques. This lion head which measures about 13″ x 8″ was made using some of the shredded junk mail and brochures that we receive at home during the week. We just used a traditional paper-mache paste that you might remember using in school made of flour and water and a little salt as a preservative. We made the paste in a bucket and then combined the paste and shredded paper together.
We then take this mixture and press it into the cement mold allowing it to dry before removing it from the mold. The lion head mold we used was for a cement lion head used in garden statuary. We then painted the lion head casting with multiple latex acrylic paints to create a faux iron patina for a rustic folk art look. Previously, we have also made this lion out of newspaper instead of the shredded material. This technique can also be made freehand allowing you to express your artistic creativity.
Reclaimed Paper Lion Face
Reclaimed Paper Lion Back Showing Shredded Paper.
Reclaimed Car Tire Trash Art
This flower planter is made from a reclaimed car tire on the rim. The hanging circle is a tire spacer from a semi-truck, the chrome piece is a cap from a semi-truck exhaust pipe, and the north south center is from an old yard decoration. The orange semi tire spacer is suspended by a metal bar shaped from a tru-link fence which is held by an old dog leash, which gives it the freedom to rotate with the wind. The mirror is an old broken store plastic convex mirror and the orange wire in front is also a piece from a tru-link fence. A blue glass bottle embellishes the tire planter. All items used to make this piece were garbage.
Reclaimed Car Tire Trash Art
Mayo Jar Windmill Trash Art
This whimsical mayo jar windmill is made from reused trash pieces. It consists of a plastic mayo jar, windmill from an old broken lawn ornament, a plastic cap from a one shot stain remover container (orange piece), an old broomstick painted blue, a tail from a lid of a 5 gallon pail of wall plaster. The yard ornament had one broken blade so David removed two more blades to even-out the windmill. He then painted the inside of the mayo jar white and left the cap blue.
After cutting out the appropriate size tail for the piece, the mayo jar cap was cut enough to insert the tail into the lid and then glued. The lid was then screwed back onto the mayo jar. For a stand, he used an old broomstick painted blue and capped it off with a cap from a small one shot stain remover container. The broomstick was then loosely screwed on from the inside of the mayo jar so it could rotate when the wind hits it. David makes his pieces to interact with nature as much as possible.
Mayo Jar Trash Art Right Side
Mayo Jar Trash Art Left Side
Repurposed Red Cast-Iron Sink
This old cast-iron sink got a new life as yard art. The sink was left over from a bathroom remodeling job done about thirty years ago. The sink had been in the yard so long that it was partially buried into the ground. We took the old sink and chrome faucets and cleaned them up. We did some sanding to remove the rust. We then primed, painted the sink a bright red color, the supporting pipe in a bright orange, and added some colorful glass flowers we had purchased a while back.
The sink looks great and added a wonderful addition to our yard. This sink could also double as a bird bath. Re-embellish, re-invent, recycle.
Red Cast-iron Sink
Recycling Trash Items
One of the most important craft projects for us is to recycle as much as we can. The house is a great place to start your recycling projects. What objects do you tend to throw out the most in your trash? Is it plastic, paper, glass or metal? In our case it’s paper from all the junk mail we still receive. Since we shred all of our paper scraps we end up with a lot of confetti style shredded paper by the bag full. So we have tried a few creative ways to incorporate this shredded paper into our arts and crafts instead of the recycle trash. In a previous article we talked about using paper mache instead of plaster in your plaster-craft molds. And in future articles we will be using the different kinds paper items you could recycle at home. Not only is recycling great for our environment, but it’s also a fun way to craft with family or friends. This summer we had a very bad start to the spring season in Chicago.
Cola Bottle Flowers by Diana & David Romaxx
We lost a lot of our plants we had kept inside for the winter. One such plant was a daisy tree we had for over four years. It started out fine, but by mid-June we lost it. But around our house my husband and I are always creating something out of throw-away items. Shown are photos of two of the recycling projects we created for our yard. My husband removed the daisy tree from the large center pot and cleaned the dry roots out very thoroughly and let it dry outside for about one month. He then painted the roots purple and the trunk gold. He added two wine bottle caps to the front side of the roots and a ruby round half glass bead over each bottle cap to complete the eyes. He then added an old waterbottle and an old telephone cord. It looked like some strange creature from outer space. He put a metal rod into the base that holds the piece yet allows movement with the wind. The flowers in the planter were all made from forty recycled liters of cola and one-inch recycled dowel rods. They really added a lot of charm to our yard and we can reuse them for many, many years. Re-embellish, reinvent, recycle.
Root Man by David Romaxx