It's great if you sort your rubbish, use both sides of a blank sheet, and have a shopping bag you use regularly instead of using the little plastic bags they give at supermarkets, but sometimes I see something in a shop, and I'm like, I bet I could make that myself.

So I was wondering if you guys creatively recycle stuff you don't need anymore?

For example, something I just did today was cut the top off an empty juice carton, wrap it up with coloured paper from magazines I'd already read, and prick little pairs of holes in it... and now I have an earring box (piccy below) and I didn't spend a penny! It makes me feel good. :)



Over to you.

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Nice idea!

Me and Mr. Vik recently bought hiking boots and I used the boxes from them, taped together and decorated, to make a bed/hidey hole for Charlie cat.

I work with small kids, so I'm always recycling corks, egg boxes, loo rolls, milk cartons etc into materials for the kids to craft with.

Almost all of our shelves were salvaged from broken old cupboards. I decorate them, sometimes paint them and put them up and they look fine :)

Here's my coffee shelf (ex-bathroom cabinet from a family member) and my vinegar/olive oil shelf (cheap IKEA spice rack, being tossed out by a friend)

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That looks quite good. The little decorations really personalise it. Thanks for sharing :)

What do you with egg cartons and loo rolls? I have a couple of those lying around.

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I don't really do many things like that, mainly because I rarely feel the need for new things. (points at his trainers with holes all over them). But I don't really throw things away, and keep lots of things in the hope that they'll one day be useful for fixing something else...

Take them to the supermarket and refill them instead of using the egg cartons and loo rolls that the supermarket provides.

Make robots out of them I would

Storm, I really like that earrings holder. Got loads of earrings but the holder I have isn't big enough. Being slightly OCD-ish, I think you might have found the solution to my problem

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Loo rolls - we make telescopes out of them! Sometimes I do a project where the kids make a kind of upright maze they can roll a ping-pong ball through - we use the loo rolls for this too. You can also use them to make puppets, with the loo roll as the 'body' or as shakers where the kids decorate them and put popcorn kernels in the middle and seal up the ends. Also good for making tree trunks. Also you can cut them in half and use them for experiments in water - they float (for a while) and you can see how much weight you can put on them before they sink. Or you can stick a toothpick sail in it and have races with the kids blowing them along. Actually, the list is really long!

Egg boxes - the individual 'cups' make a great centre for flowers, especially daffodils which is great at Easter time. You can also do the boat things with them, or use them as 'egg shells' and make chicks out of cotton wool again as an Easter thing. They are also great pig noses!

The kids I work with a really young, by the way, not like, 15 year olds.... :P

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I teach art and social studies... how can I not do amazing things with recycled products?

I use plastic tubes with lids (from powdered juice, like Crystal Light) to make time boxes in 6th grade Social Studies.

I use paper roll tubes for projects like cylinder seals (Ancient Near East) or castle towers (medieval) in World History.

I will try to think of some things that you could use around the home.

I save bits and scraps of everything for craft and art projects- ribbon, beads, paper bags, fabric, etc. The nice side of that is that coworkers can ask.. do you have _____? and I can answer 99% of the time, of course!

Lmao!


Flower pots are good, especially with plastic milk cartons. Except I don't have any flowers. I might get some seeds though. Anyone know any plants that will bloom, or at the very least, not wilt during winter?

I like creative recycling but I don't really want the things I recycle to *look* recycled, and they have to have some practical purpose. Therein my problem lies.

But the pig faces could be an idea. My room needs decorating ;)

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Making new things out of recyclable material is great fun, especially when it's with a group of kids. The programme Art Attack on TV had some brilliant ideas to turn these things into art work.
I also did an art assignment at school where we had to make an art project using recycled stuff. I decided to make a robot out of an old shoebox and bits of foil. I think schools should do more of this sort of thing to show that recycling can be fun.

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*Bump*

I figured now would be a good time to get some good ideas flowing during this expensive time of year for various festivals.

On a forum I moderate a lady mentioned how she recycles bits and bobs and makes her own things. Her recycled tip was Christmas/present tags.
Using decorations and pictures from cardboard boxes, packaging she cut out rudolph, santa, snowmen etc (bigger images) and stuck them on card (if they weren't already printed on card). She then hole punched the top and slipped a bit of coloured ribbon through. She posted a pic and it was really good. She used old Christmas cards, food packaging, wrapping paper (from previous years and birthday presents) and managed to make 43 tags for almost nothing! Seriously, it doesn't look tacky at all and they match her wrapping paper! Enjoy!

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Oh, that's a good one AJ.

Something I have in my head but I haven't got around to doing:

Give each of my hyacinths this glass pot.

I buy my peanut butter from Whole Earth and their glass jars are a pretty decent size (5 inches by 3 inches) for house plants. After I scrape off the label it should look like new :) Just need my hyacinths to survive winter without me so I can repot them when I come back from vacation.

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Those large tins of Quality Street / Roses / Celebrations could be used as containers for all sorts of things. They are all resealable so even foodstuffs like biscuits can be kept in them. My nan uses them to put cakes in as they are a nice size and circular (which always helps )

We do that in our house too. OK you can pick up a bag of tags for about 50p, but that's not the point. I think it's a wonderful idea, and it works very well :) You can use many things that you don't need any more and you're sure to find something that matches your wrapping paper :)

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Instructables is a great site for tips on reusing things.

My girlfriend is really creative, and has been a great help for thinking of different ways to recycle things into something that looks nice and/or is useful.

If you have an old ping pong ball that's no longer needed, carefully cut it with a craft knife. You can make a crash helmet for a pigeon or tortoise. :)

Why would a pigeon or tortoise need a crash helmet?

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Pigeon's fly (and are stupid), and tortoises race hares!

If you have those cardboard tubes from kitchen roll left over, cover them in silver foil and slide them on your cats legs. Hey Presto! Your cat now walks like a robot cat!

... I think that it's almost worth getting a cat just to be able to do that.
EDIT: but remember to recycle the cat once you are bored of its robotic movements.

Remember what should be remembered, and forget what should be forgotten.Alter what is changeable, and accept what is mutable.