tell me about stuff you recycle into art or crafts! i make paper beads, i use scrap fabric or cut down old clothes, and i involve the kids in homeschool craft projects using egg cartons, toilet paper tubes, plastic bottles, bottle caps, spritzer can rings...anything i can come up with. please share your ideas!
I use anything old, from wooden spoons to old pitch forks, and add flowers or put a fresh coat of paint on it.
well, when my t-shirts get a rip in the armpit or something and become unwearable, i make them into pillows. When my CD burner messes up and i have a blank CD, I put pictures on them over the hole thingy. um... I also make bracelets out of random things like neon pink plastic ribbon that's tied to trees, lol.
I don't do this but someone I know does and I always thought it was a cool recyled crafts idea. He took pieces of old things like shovels and scrap metal and rakes and then makes animals out of them by soudering them together. He made a lady bug... the old shovel piece was the body. He faced it upside down, soudered on scrap metal legs and antennas and then painted it. It was very cute. He also made a big crane bird. I forget what all the pieces were but his projects looked like the animals he was making. The lady bug was a cute little garden ordiment(sp?). And, he sat the crane by his door and the beak held a welcome sign. Cute!
I like paper Mache ~~ use old news papers & make forms with chicken wire,,balloons,,,cardboard,,,, paper mache & paint! I also bought a shinny spray to make the art look more shinnier ~
I collect glass jars and bottles, and I repaint them. I use the bottles to keep my home made salad dressing in them, and the jars are great for storing homemade jams and some of my craft things like beads and buttons!
My grandaddy used to be incredible with macrame and he would take all of his scrap macrame cord and chop it up real fine and then draw a picture and glue all of the scrap cord onto the picture.....from like ten feet away it looks like a painting until you get close and you can tell what he did.
man i really need to create and craft more..feel like i have this burning inside me to do it ive been ignoring, and theres so many ideas and dreams to fulfill its overwhelming... the only thing ive actually recycled into a craft(thought about a lot)is plastic peanut jar tops into saucers for plants.
Reuse clothing for the fabrics, busted tiles for mosaics, scraps of wood for any number of things, decoupage uses old paper items, jars, tins, or whatever item I decoupage thats always recycled. I bet those pompom knitting needles are cute as hell!
I used scrap rebar from construction sights or refuse industrial metals in my shop, I like to take old bolts and roll it into a spiral, hammer a base of it, add two pieces of scrap mig wire to the bold head and you have a killer snail at construction site dumpsters you can sometimes find saw blades that have worn out, take em home and chop them up with a cold chisel, grind it to shape , attach a wood handle, whamo a kitchen knife. railroad spikes forge out into nice camp knives, a piece of truck spring can be used to make a good edge in an axe head.
heyyy i finally incorporated some recycling into a craft today!! well i havent started in on the crafting process yet, cuz i think im gonna need my grandpas help(and tools). but i got the idea last night, to make one of them cat condo jungles, those elaborate scratching posts with beds and toys and tunnells and all that...i was gonna get my aunt one for her birthday, but realized their like 200 bucks for these simple little designs, and that was plenty of inspiration to make my own right there. my imagination was running wild with so many things i could make for our cat and my aunts. but today, i went to a carpet store and looked for some scrap carpet in the dumpster cuz i wasnt about to buy new ones, and didnt find anything but a single little piece. buuut then i got really lucky and ended up runnin into another carpet store with the perrrrrfect blue and beige and brown carpet slices, perfect sizes too for what i wanna do, all for free. i talked to a manager there, and apparently people carpet their entire houses with scrap carpet for free sometimes. then i went to home depot, and asked if they had any scrap wood they were throwin away i could have, and the dude hooked me riiiiiiight up. i got all sorts of plywood thats gonna work out juuuust fine with this little venture, all for free. i love bein an environmentalist sometimes, really pays off and helps you get through this world with a little more common sense ;P im so psyched to embark on the creative process of makin these things though. its very very fulfilling to me to make things and craft and create, especially things that help others and put some beauty and love into the world. im such a perfectionist about things sometimes though, like i saw this periwinkle carpet in the dumpster and there was noo way i was gonna use that. im very self-critical of my work, though i do try to have some faith as well. but i think it pays off really and is healthy in art, and life in ways since life is all essentially a creation anyway
