Plastic Bottle Trash Art Flowers
One of the most important elements of crafting for us is to recycle as much as we can. The house is a great place to start recycling projects because it is easy to see what objects we tend to throw out the most in our trash. Whether it’s plastic, paper, glass or metal, it is a challenge to find creative ways to incorporate the trash materials into our arts and crafts. One way we thought of adding color to our yard all year round here in Chicago was to make some kind of art with plastic pieces. And what better medium to reclaim than 50 plastic soda bottles for flowers we had in mind. We started to cut the plastic bottles in different strip cuts to imitate flower pedals.
After we cut the pedals in different dimensions to create different style flower pedals, we painted the back of the pedals with vibrant enamel colors. Next, we let them dry and took an 18 inch long dowel rod that we had recycled from old VHS racks we had taken apart. We hand painted the dowel rods with a green indoor- outdoor acrylic paint. When we cut out the initial pedals, we cut out the bottom of the bottles all the way around and these are what make the center of each flower. We next painted the flower centers in complimentary colors to the flower colors. We then placed the painted bottom (used as the center of the flower) over one end of the dowel rod and drilled a screw right in the middle of the center and into the dowel rod.
This creates the middle center of the flower. Next we took three of the bottles we had painted and flipped them upwards. We then took a green bottle to create the leaves and placed this first on the dowel rod. Next we placed one of the flower pedals and pushed it up tightly onto the dowel rod. Then we drilled a screw under the edge of the last bottle/flower pedals to hold them in place. You can rotate each row of bottles/pedals to align the flower pedals to look any way that you’d like. The flower pedals can be painted in any color combination that you’d like. We left our flowers outside throughout the entire winter and they looked beautiful against the white snow. These recycled plastic bottle flowers allow you to have a beautiful colorful garden all year round.
Not only is recycling great for our environment, but it is also a fun way to craft with family and friends.
Reclaimed Wood Abstract Doll
I’ve always wanted to try making an abstract doll of some kind, but had no idea where to even start. Four months ago, I experimented and drew a simple shape on a piece of scrap wood I found in our basement and asked my husband to cut out the drawn shape. Although the shape was simple, it was also a bit crude as the shape had a round head (no neck), a squarish torso and a bell shaped skirt bottom for the lower body. The doll measures 17 inches tall (including the base on which she is perched) and 11-1/2 inches wide (at its widest point of the wood skirt/body).
I thought I’d make the doll’s arms with wire and envisioned bending her wired arms, attaching a small bouquet of flowers to her hands and her (wire arms) holding them up near her face as if to smell them. That’s when I thought of painting her face with closed eyes as if she was taking in the fragrance of the flowers. I did paint the doll’s face with her eyes closed, but the plan to use wire arms did not work out, so I ended up leaving the doll’s face painted with her eyes closed.
I wanted to make some kind of outfit for the doll using as much of my reclaimed fabrics as possible. Looking through my old fabrics, I found a very pretty light pink (polyester) fabric that was perfect because I had so much of this fabric that if I made any mistakes on any part of the outfit, I could start all over again without worries of running out of fabric.
I held the fabric up to the doll’s waist, pinned the fabric a half inch longer for the hem allowance at both ends, cut the fabric and held the fabric against the doll, roughly gathering it to get an idea of how full/wide to make the full length skirt. I tripled the width and then cut the fabric. I made a simple running stitch hem at the waistline and ran a bigger basting stitch at the top edge of the waistline so I could pull the fabric, gathering it at the waist. The skirt began to fully gather and take a beautiful shape. Once the fabric was more or less evenly gathered around the waist, I knotted the thread to hold that tension. For a closure at the waist I sewed a very small snap (base), then sewed the other snap (top half) to the other end at the waist. I left a two inch opening at the waist below the snap closure, hand sewed a quarter inch hem straight down to seal both open fabric panels at the back of the skirt and then sewed them together to complete the skirt. I ironed the entire skirt and surprisingly the fabric turned out very nice and full ,considering I did not use a petticoat underneath.
Because the skirt was so plain, I decided to crochet a pretty beige trim about an inch from the bottom edge of the skirt and continued crocheting all the way around. I used a 00 size crochet needle and crocheted the trim with three double-crochet stitches. I pinned the crochet trim to the skirt as I continued to crochet the trim all the way around the base of the skirt. I removed one pin at a time and hand sewed the trim to the skirt with matching beige thread.
I ended up making the doll arms from two square pieces I cut from my old black sweatshirt. I rolled up the squares, pulling on the stretchy fabric and hand sewing them into a rough arm shape. Since the doll had no shoulders, I hot glued (and tacked down) each of the arms to an approximate place where they looked best on either side of doll’s torso. I made the little hands from polymer clay and pierced a hole in the top part of the clay wrists before baking them so that I could later sew (attach) them onto the (sweatshirt) arms.
The jacket was made from two squares of the same pink fabric. I measured the two squares by eye, cut and then sewed them together, cutting the front square down the middle so the jacket would be open in front. I left two holes on either side near the top of the squares so I could sew on sleeves. The sleeves were also squarish in shape and very loosely made so that I could put the doll arms into the sleeves. I later crocheted the shawl around the doll to make it look like she had shoulders and to cover the loose fitting clothes.
For the doll hair, I used a roll of brown woolly trim that I found in my yarn box. I cut six 4″ long pieces, and with needle and matching brown thread loosely sewed the six pieces together to form a head cover that resembled hair. The furry wool is so wild, it really looked like hair, and I painted the doll’s wood head in a matching brown color so you can’t really notice the open spaces throughout the sewed hair piece.
The Accessories
The hat is made from a scrap piece of thick interfacing leftover from a purse project. I had several jar lids, and placed them on the doll’s head to find the right hat width for the doll’s head. With a pencil, I traced around the lid onto the interfacing, cut the round shape and then by eye, another round hole in the center to rest on the doll’s head. For the crown, I cut a rectangular strip of interfacing and hot glued it from one edge of the center hole to the other edge of the hole. I covered the entire hat with the same pink fabric, and hot glued it to the interfacing. I also crocheted a trim for the hat (sewed it onto the hat) and embellished the hat with a little rosette (from the same pink fabric) and hot glued the rosette to the center front of the hat.
The little purse measures 1-3/4″ wide by 2″ long and is made of the same pink fabric folded into a little rectangle and then hand sewn to shape. I also cut and sewed a small narrow piece of the same pink fabric for a tiny purse strap. Later, I also crocheted a matching trim near the top of the purse and added a tiny rosette.
The parasol measures 7″ long by 2″ wide and is made from plastic skewers that I had saved from a gift fruit arrangement. I used one skewer as the main center post, tightly wrapped a rubberband (wound around many times) near the skewer bottom end, took six more skewers and tucked them into one strand of the wound rubber band, spacing them evenly around the main center skewer. I was surprised that this worked and the six skewers remained in place evenly around the center skewer. Using wire cutters, I trimmed the six skewers shorter than the main center skewer. I then measured and wrapped the same pink fabric around the length of the skewers and added four inches to the total fabric width. I then hot glued the bottom (folded) edge of the pink fabric to the skewers one at a time making sure to pull extra fabric in between the skewers so it would mimic the look of a semi-folded umbrella. I repeated the same process to the top end of the parasol.
To make the parasol handle, I used three plastic hook-shaped pieces (saved from the top of three packets of socks) and hot glued them together. I also hot glued the main skewer to the hook handle. I later wrapped the handle with the crochet thread to make it look like one uniform piece and repeated that process around the bottom end of the parasol.
Making this doll was a very challenging experience, but very rewarding upon completing all of the accessories. And the most fun part of making this doll was that there were no rules because this was an abstract doll that I made from scrap wood and leftover reclaimed materials.
Manila Folder Abstract Collage
This clothes line abstract collage started out as trashed manilla folders that were being thrown away. I really liked the thickness of these expandable folders and their chipboard-like quality gave me the idea to cut them into sections and store them in my scrap folder for future craft projects. The wood frame was one of several frames bought on sale a while back, which were also saved for future craft projects.
I was inspired with the idea for this art collage when I saw a movie which featured a little house in the countryside. In one yard scene, there was a line full of very colorful clothes billowing in the breeze and it was interesting that you could surmise there was a baby and children of different ages living in the house just by the variety of clothes hanging on the line. I thought, what a beautiful picture this would make, and then thought of this idea to have different types of clothes hanging from a line. The frame (on the outside edges) measures 6-1/2 inches in length by 11-1/2 inches in width.
I measured the back inset of the frame, drew these measurements onto a large piece of the reclaimed cardboard and then cut out the rectangular cardboard which served as a background to support the art pieces. One side of this reclaimed cardboard was a cream color, which was perfect for me to paint the country scene. I used regular acrylic craft paints for the sky and the clouds. Much later, I decided to paint some daisies throughout the scene.
To make the scale of the clothing seem as realistic as possible, I looked through my old fabric remnants for the smallest prints I could find. I then placed the little cardboard shapes onto their respective fabrics and by eye traced each shape onto the fabric (leaving about a 1/4 inch margin all the way around the shape), and then cut out the traced shapes. Next, I used a toothpick to dot a little bit of hot glue (from my hot glue gun) onto each tiny cardboard edge, glued the fabric edge onto the dot of hot glue. Once the cut out fabrics were hot glued to the cardboard cutouts, I let them dry thoroughly. In the meantime, the tiny white striped shirt, white socks, and polka-dot towel were made from plain white cotton, but I used different colored fabric markers to paint on the little stripes and polka-dots. I also used the reclaimed cardboard to make the laundry basket and a brown fabric marker to draw a weave-like pattern on the basket. I used round toothpicks and wire cutters to make the tiny wooden clothes pins, which were carefully hot glued on the string and clothing item by using a toothpick and tiny dot of hot glue.
I used more scrap pieces of cardboard and cut two long strips to make the wood posts. I hot glued some white string near the top of each post to use as the clothes line. I cut out many more small pieces of the thick reclaimed cardboard scraps and hot glued many tiny sets of three little squares together to glue behind each item and make them stand out from the background and give each piece more depth.
I had so much fun making these pieces from reclaimed cardboard and since I cut up many more expandable folders that were thrown away, I will definitely be making another similar project in the near future — stay tuned.
Collage On Lampshade
A great way to give old worn out or damaged lamp shades a different look and feel is to cover them with anything from leftover fabrics to holiday wrapping paper. In the case of the lampshade featured here, I decided to cover it with some type of fabric or paper when I found it had gotten stained after many years in our garage. I was lucky to find a beautiful Victorian print wrapping paper that had the colors and feel of the look I was trying to capture. To get started, I first removed the outer cloth-like fabric from the lampshade, which revealed a white plastic lampshade base. To give this white plastic base a more antique look, I painted the inside of the lampshade with a brown acrylic craft paint. The lampshade also had a narrow white cloth strip at the top and bottom rims, so I used a strong cup of coffee and paintbrush to tint both of the white cloth strips.
I then cut out all of my favorite pictures from the Victorian wrapping paper, and pieces from some leopard print wrapping paper too. I also have some rubber stamps of different old world pictures (like the London Tower, the Paris Eiffel Tower, and other various Victorian images) which I stamped onto parchment paper and cut out as well. Next, I laid out all of the pictures on a table so that I could see their placement before gluing them onto the lampshade. Once I finished positioning the pictures in an order I found very pleasing, I used a sponge brush and Mod Podge to apply the pictures onto the old lampshade. After the lampshade thoroughly dried, I applied another coat of Mod Podge on the entire shade to seal it. I let that coat dry for a couple hours, and then applied one more coat, which gave the pieces a blended look.
I was very happy with the results and although I didn’t use any decorative embellishments on the top and bottom edges of my lampshade, you can always use beautiful fringe, jewels or textured trim to decorate your lampshade. After a party or any holiday, if I come across a beautiful piece of wrapping paper, I try to recycle as much of it as I can for future craft projects.
Reclaimed Pillow Covers
Pillows make great accents in our homes. Sometimes, pillows that may have looked great a few years ago may have lost their luster due to everyday wear and tear and some fabrics may just go out of style, but one could always make covers to give those pillows a fresh look. I had such a dilemma with some pillows that I bought at a clearance sale at a store in our area that was going out of business. I liked the size and shape of the pillows, but not the color. I had some striped pink fabric I loved and had enough to cover the two small pillows.
I placed one of the pillows in the center of the fabric and folded one end of the fabric over half way over the pillow and then the folded the bottom of the fabric up towards the middle of the pillow. I measured and pinned near the places where I would cut making sure to pin a 1/4″ seam allowance. I then cut the fabric making sure to keep the stripes lined up and sewed the sides. I also sewed across the middle, but made sure I left an opening large enough to slip the pillow inside the opening. It turned out very well and I had enough fabric to make one more pillow cover. The pillows look very nice on my chair. In the past, I’ve also used leftover fabric that I reclaimed from old drapes to cover a chair and made a small matching pillow cover. I’ve even used denim from some old jeans to embellish other small pillows to give them a more interesting look, so you can reclaim fabric from just about anything you’d like.
