creative jewish mom

Recycled Bottle Bee Craft....Buzz Buzz Buzz!

How about making some bees from recycled plastic bottles? This would be a great project for a classroom or homeschooling unit about bees! I haven't done this project myself, but rather photographed it on our recent visit to a bee farm, here. And of course I'm always excited to see others crafting with recycled materials!

And only after taking a closer look at this photo of a plastic bottle bee and a plastic bottle flower did I realize that the sign says that one can learn more about how to make bees from recycled bottles on their website! So here is the photo provided by the website found here, though I think you can probably take a few shortcuts and maybe improve a bit on head?

The instructions say: Cut on the black lines and fold according to red lines. The bottom portion with the v-shaped arrow is actually indicating to link the two sides together such that the bee's tail is narrower than the body. Also, the recycled bottle bees in the very top photo have clear wings, so in that case the bottle was painted after the cuts were made. Enjoy and let me know if you give this one a try!

 

 

Recycled Plastic Bottle Flower Bouquet

Yippee, I do believe I have come up with a fun way to make recycled plastic bottle flowers that look artfully elegant! Just in time for spring, though of course these flowers will last practically forever, and are great to have on hand for a last minute centerpiece. Plus your recycled plastic flower bouquet will be the talk of the town, and then you'll end up teaching all of your friends to make them too, so do keep that in mind! Truthfully, no one actually asked me to teach them how to make them, they just asked to take some home! Oh and the kindergarten teacher borrowed a bouquet to teach her students about recycling, which made me very happy!

The story goes like this: in September 2011 I made some gold plastic bottle flowers for my succah, and posted about them as simple plastic bottle flower ornaments. As I recall I didn't think they looked quite finished enough, and when I ran out of time I stuffed them all into a garbage bag, where they sat patiently awaiting their debut here! Last week I needed some arrangements, eight to be exact for a community party, and decided to  try combining a small version of my giant paper flowers with the a newly updated and improved version of plastic bottle flowers, namely with fabric rosette centers! And I'm happy to say I love the results. 

So gather together your supplies and follow the tutorials which I've linked to below. For each bouquet you'll need at least two paper flowers and six to eight (or more for a huge bouquet) plastic bottle flowers in a variety of sizes.

For the recycled plastic bottle flowers: follow my tutorial here.

For the paper flowers: follow my tutorial here, just make a five petaled flower using the smallest petal only. Make pom poms from pink yarn, ours is variegated, and attach with hot glue.

Enjoy and let me know how it goes!

 

Recycled Plastic Bottle Flowers DIY, For A Bouquet!

These are the recycled plastic bottle flowers that I used in my recycled plastic bottle flower bouquet. Of course they don't look exactly lovely from this view, but I wanted you to understand exactly how I made them, so that you can DIY them yourself!

While I did experiment with a variety of shapes, the four I'm showing you here are by far the most successful. Of course feel free to experiment and come up with your own flower shapes!

 

Above: The simplest petaled flower to make is with either eight or six petals. Of course if you want to make flowers that look more like daisies, so try ten petals, which could be nice though will take more time and patience.

Above: These two smaller flowers are great filler flowers for filling space around the rim of the vase, or wherever needed. The one on the left is an 8 petaled flower yet to bloom, and the flower on the right is sort of like a chrysanthemum, and a great addition to the bouquet. And yes, I did make long versions of this chrysanthemum, but they ended up looking like giant spiders, and not all that pretty. Your call!

You'll Need:

• plastic soda bottles
• tutorial for cutting plastic bottles for crafting
• tutorial for making plastic bottle flowers
• gold spray paint
• skewers, both heavy duty and light weight
• sheer fabric, metallic or colorful....I used disposable table runner material which is slightly stiff
• a hot glue gun

How To:

1. Make flowers according to tutorial, and spray paint of the backside of the flower. 
2. Affix skewers to flowers by hot glueing them inside the nozzle, on the side. I used heavy duty flat skewers for the larger flowers, and regular small round skewers for the smaller flowers
3. Make fabric rosettes and affix to center of flower to hide hole. There are a million tutorials on google, though this one looks good, and not too perfect, which is preferable.
4. Cover the neck of the bottle with fabric, and affix with hot glue, and do a better job than I did! Though truthfully when the flowers were packed into a bouquet, you really don't see the necks. Plus I ran out of this gold fabric, so only had little scraps to use. You might want to cover the entire stem with fabric, your choice!
5. Arrange flowers in a vase and trim skewers where necessary to make a nice arrangement.
6. That's it, enjoy!

Note: There is one more flower that I forgot to photograph, and than involves using the bottle bottom and gluing it to the center of a large six petaled flower, and then affixing a rosette in the middle. Will try to photograph that for you another day!

 

Woven Recycled Bleach Bottle Basket

You can use a recycled bleach bottle to make a really fun woven basket. And when you add a little felt liner, your recycled bottle basket suddenly becomes really amazingly cute. If I do say so myself. Now, I must admit, I made this basket over two years ago, and for some reason never quite fit it into my schedule to take some photos. So in a way this little woven basket craft is new to me too! But now that I'm revisiting this one, I can't wait to make more, and I may even make some to use for gift baskets for Purim......you know for the special people like teachers and such who deserve (and in my case, will expect) something just a bit special.

Here's another similar photo for those of you who love to study things and needed a slightly lower shot.

You'll Need:

• a large opaque bottle, like a bleach or floor cleaner bottle
• colorful yarn, the thicker the better, but a variety of thicknesses is good too
• good scissors
• masking tape

How To:

1. With a kitchen knife, cut the top off your bottle. Thoroughly wash out the piece you'll be using. Trim the remaining basket portion to the desired height with scissors.
2. Wrap a piece of masking tape around the top circumference, and mark off even increments of about 2 cm , or just a bit larger, on the tape. Make sure that you'll have an odd number of pieces so that the over and under process will work out at the end of the round! Place another piece of tape around the bottom of the basket as a guide for where to stop cutting.
3. Cut slits in your basket all the way around, making sure not to cut beyond the bottom guide. (If you take a good look at my photo, you may notice that I cut without marking anything off which is fine if you're just anxious to get going, and aren't a perfectionist, but then you may have to fudge things a bit as I apparently did as I actually cut an even number of pieces, but go figure, this was a million projects ago!)
4. Tie a piece of yarn to one of the pieces from the inside. Start weaving!
5. Make a felt sleeve using a sewing machine and two colors of felt. You could also quite simply glue fabric or felt to the edge to conceal it. Or glue a piece of fabric to the bottom and sides, and then cover the rim with a felt or ribbon edge that covers both the inside and outside rim.

And just for the record, the ever creative Gail over at that artist woman, had a very similar idea which she posted here to my great surprise after I made my basket. I love her version with sections of different sizes and she used foam cups I believe, decoupaged with recycled paper, adding another dimension to this project. So now that you have two source for this wonderful project, collect those bleach bottles and  recycled containers, and lets get started!

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Simple Plastic Bottle Flower Ornaments

Plastic bottle flowers are simple to make and so much fun! They make sweet ornaments hanging singly as I've shown here, though the possibilities are endless. Bouquets, wreaths, centerpieces, chandeliers.....these are just a few of the things that you could make with plastic bottle flowers!

I can't decide if I like the visible bottle nozzle or not, but if it bothers you, you could certainly make some leaves from fabric or paper and use those as a cover up, or you could take the small flower made from the bottom of the bottle and glue that over the nozzle. Have fun, and by the way, these would be great Succah ornaments, especially for those of you who live in areas where it often rains. 

You'll Need:

• plastic bottles
• how to cut plastic bottle flowers tutorial, posted yesterday
• spray paint
• fishing line

How To: Cut flowers, spray paint on the back side of the flower. You can choose to just lightly mist your flowers with paint to give them just a bit of definition, or cover completely as I've done here. Make a hole in a petal with a thick needle and hang with fishing line.

Note: The large flower at the bottom of the top photo was made using the top of the bottle plus the majority of the height of the bottle, unlike the other flower which was made according to the instructions for cutting the bottle. If you do decide to make some large flowers I'd recommend cutting no more than five petals, as my version with six petals produces a rather sickly looking flower! I'm quite sure I'll be making lots of big flowers to fill up my Succah walls!

 

 

Plastic Bottle Apple For The Teacher

This morning I sent my kids off to school with these cute plastic bottle apples for the teacher, together with a wish for a happy new year, written by each child.

I filled the bottom of the bottle with a circle of round tissue paper, and left the top portion empty to view the red colored treats.

 

For complete instructions, see my tutorial here. This is a simple project that's great as a teacher appreciation gift any time!

 

 

How To Cut A Recycled Plastic Soda Bottle For Crafting

With Succot crafting just around the corner, after the Rosh HaShana crafting, it's time to start saving those plastic bottles so you'll have some of the basics on hand for some exciting DIY Recycled Bottle succah decor.

I'd recommend starting to cut those bottles as you save them, to be one step ahead of the game, and to possibly save just a bit of space. I will be doing crafts with three different sections of soda bottles labeled in the diagram above. And if you really want to go all out, you'll need many more tops and bottoms than middle sections. The bottom section (#1 in the diagram) is very easy to save in stacks, and the top section also stacks somewhat. That middle section is a bit bothersome, but hey, it's just until Succos!

How To: Squeeze the bottle slightly with one hand and make a cut with a sharp knife in the other hand, cutting on one of the lines I've drawn for you. You can finish cutting with the knife, or hand off the bottles to kids to finish cutting with sharp scissors. That's it, more to come soon!

 

Paper Mache Vases From Recycled Plastic Bottles

Since we're on the theme of paper mache, I thought I'd show you a  simple paper mache vase project that's perfect for summer crafting, as well as Shavuos! And it's a great way to use all those cute tiny bottles from medicine, yogurt, vanilla etc. And once you've finished your paper mache vases, you can fill them with tiny summer flowers for a super sweet seasonal display.

You'll Need:

• recycled plastic bottles from food or medicine
• newspaper for paper mache
• metallic gold paint
• images from napkins or paper for decoupaged details
• beads or ribbon to cover the bottle neck

How To:Wash and dry bottles. Cover bottles with several layers of paper mache and set aside to dry. Paint with metallic gold paint and set aside to dry. Apply small designs with decoupage.

 

Make Festive Napkin Rings From Recycled Plastic Bottles!

 

Since we're on the topic of crafting with recycled plastic bottles and yarn, I bring you yet another simple idea: make napkin rings from pieces of plastic soda bottles that you've wrapped with yarn! So fun and colorful and perfect for the Mexican fiesta theme that I'm building on here. Or actually perfect for any casual table setting, since you can pick yarn colors that work with your scheme and have fun!

You'll Need:

• recycled plastic soda bottles
• yarn scraps
• a hot glue gun
• packing tape or any strong tape

How To:

1. Cut off top and bottom of bottle, leaving just the straight middle portion.
2. Decide how tall you'd like your rings to be, and with a scissors, cut a ring off the plastic bottle. You do not need an intact ring, so first cut down the bottle and then around.
3. Curl the plastic bottle onto itself so that's it's almost a double layer, and secure with tape. If you're using cloth napkins, check to see the size you'll need.
4. Starting from the inside, attach the first end of yarn with hot glue, and start wrapping yarn around the height of the napkin ring, securing with hot glue where necessary on the inside, and joining new pieces where desired.
5. If these directions aren't clear, you'll have to excuse me, as I'm literally writing this on the run with a few children calling "mommy" and another in the kitchen asking for another serving of our Friday afternoon meal, Moroccan Hummus, today served with whole wheat couscous, yumm!

 

Recycle Plastic Bottles & Make Super Cute Apple Shaped Boxes!

 

Apparently I have apples on the brain, which is not surprising given that Rosh HaShana is just over a week away! Last week I was looking at a plastic bottle and realized that the bottom of those that I have look very much like apples! After some complicated ideas involving spray paint, and only one bottle, it occurred to me that two soda bottle bottoms stacked look very much like an apple!  Yippee!

I'm so happy that I arrived at this cute and simple idea, that you can make in just a few simple steps with no toxic paint involved! You can use these apple boxes to hold treats or even a small gift,  and adjust their height depending on what you'll place inside. A perfect little surprise for Rosh HaShana, or any party, don't you think? And they're quick to make, so you can whip up a whole bunch after the kids are in dreamland, and place them on your holiday table for a fun surprise. You can also add some dehydrated and dried apple chips in these apple containers for kids to enjoy the apple candy chips!

You'll Need:

• plastic soda bottles with bottoms that look like apples, mine are seltzer bottles
• pieces of real sticks
• red fabric or red tissue paper
• green felt in two shades of green
• ribbon
• a hole punch
• a hot glue gun

How To:

1. Cut the bottoms off of two plastic bottles using a sharp knife to make the first cut and then scissors.trim bottles to desired height.
2. Cut a piece of stick to about 1 1/2", and using hot glue affix to top of apple
3. Using a heavy duty hold punch, punch corresponding holes in both top and bottom at the front and back of apple. The back set of holes will be used to make a hinge, while the front set of holes is tied with a bow for opening the apple. You can choose to make your closures with either four holes or two holes, both shown in the photo above.
4. Wrap your gift or treats in fabric or paper, and place inside, or alternatively, glue fabric loosely to the inside of your apple, and insert gift, which will result in a more re-usable container!
5. Tie apple closed with ribbon, and make leaves from felt and glue to stem with a hot glue gun.
6. Hide your bushel of apples in a secret place until it's time for the surprise!