Craft Ideas Using Recycled Materials

Craft ideas using recycled materials

The government Council in this locality has the alliterative slogan, ‘Reduce, Reuse and Recycle’ plastered on every billboard, trash can and bus’s behind. For a seasoned and economical crafter musky, moth eaten materials and mangled colourful envelopes are a magpie’s find for creative inspiration and ingenuity as well as being environmentally friendly.

Don’t ditch your old dresses or bin your outdated curtains or crockery for one person’s rubbish is another’s prized possession and a world of wonders is waiting in your junk pile like a hobbyist’s Narina wardrobe or a Doctor’s TARDIS, bigger on the inside and full of potential and adventure.

For example have you ever considered shredding your old correspondence (this feels partly invigorating if said correspondence is a bill or bank statement) mulching it down in paste and creating your very own papier-mâché masterpiece?

Messy and therefore immediately attractive to any little people in your house you could spread last weeks newspaper over your kitchen table and mould cute critter with a kitchen roll tube clasped in its paws to hold pens and pencils that you usually find scattered along the floor. What about blowing up a balloon left over from a crazy birthday bash and coat it in goopy, glued goodness and sculpting ‘mini-me’ hat stand, bursting the balloon and painting the dried resin to match your colour scheme?

How about old fabrics and jewellery? Unwanted bangles make great hoops for mystical dream catchers to ensnare any nightmares that plague restful sleep.

1.) Cut some old colourful material into strips and bind the hoop, wrapping it tightly and carefully, covering all glimpses of the bracelet.

2.) Then you take some waxed thread or even leftover wool yarn, twine or thin wire and tie it to your dressed hoop.

3.) Mentally divide up your circle into about twelve even spaces along its circumference and keeping your thread taught, loop your thread round your hoop at the first interval and bring it back underneath your taught line and on to the next interval until you have a rough twelve sided shape.

4.) Continue to loop your thread in the same way, this time wrapping it around the middles of your straight sides and keep going, weaving a web-like design until it’s too tight in the middle to manoeuvre and tie off your thread.

5.) .Now be inventive perhaps taking more fabric and tying strands to your wheel weighing them down with beads and feathers or whatever decoration you can imagination and you have a mythical magic talisman to hang near your bed and protect you from troubled dreams.

What if you’ve invited a few friends over and matters have escalated into a madcap mayhem party and don’t feel like creeping out before work with a load of spent bottles and cans in case your elderly neighbours call alcoholics anonymous.

Wash out your bottles and scrap off the labels and make oldie-worldie candle holders maybe adding a splash of glass paint or decorating then with broken china to form artistic mosaic patterns.

How about crushing down those cans and using them as crafty building blocks for a modern art sculpture or carefully cutting out stencils with a Stanley knife to design some retro, recycled wind chimes.

Old Christmas cards and birthday cards can be cannibalised for scrap booking or card making and unwanted necklaces can be de-threaded and the beads reused to form something more funky and contemporary in its style.

The possibilities are as endless as your imagination so don’t cram your dustbins or skip your stained shirts and sartorial embarrassments but put them to good use while you wile away some ‘me’ tie in front of the television curse the boredom of a rainy day. There are literally thousands of free craft ideas and challenges swamping the internet by avid crafting enthusiasts and most of them can be done on a budget with whatever knick-knacks and follies you have cluttering your home and robbing it of its fen – shui. So ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ something great to thaw your creative passions today.