“Rubbish! Reuse Your Refuse” by Kate Shoup is a new book out this spring dedicated to helping you turn your “garbage” into cute crafts. For example, the book offers photos and gives instructions on how to turn pieces of aluminum cans, credit cards, poker chips and wine corks into jewelry. Other projects that caught our eye: An iPod cover made from an old record album cover and a colorful clutch purse made from the webbing of a lawn chair.
In this era of green and inexpensive living, we want to know how you turn your trash into treasures. Do you use drink bottles to create decorative vases? Broken dishes to make colorful mosaic stepping stones for your garden?
Click on “comments” to share a tip. At 5 p.m. Tuesday, we’ll randomly select one participant to win a free copy of “Rubbish” (John Wiley & Sons, $19.99).
UPDATE: Congrats to coppercorn, who we randomly selected as the winner in our giveaway. Thanks to all who participated!
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We save the cardboard toilet paper and paper towel cores for the kids to make crafts out of. Also, any computer printouts that don’t get used go in the scratch pile for the kids to draw on.
That’s great, coppercorn. What crafts do your kids make with those cardboard tubes?
They’ve made the butterfly here:
http://www.dltk-kids.com/crafts/insects/mbutterfly.html
I make new furniture out of stuff that is very ugly. I covered an beat up, stained metal filing cabinet with alternating black and red duct tape stripes and made it new and shiny. I also refinished (minus the chemicals, it was all me and my sandpaper) to match it to other furniture I bought new.
Also, before I started taking my own recycled cloth bags shopping, I used the plastic ones as bathroom trash can liners.
I use the plastic that products come in for the “glass” that goes in front of a picture in frames for ornaments. It makes the frame a lot lighter for the tree or anywhere else you want to use it. I have used it for a generation tree for my genealogy. Thanks, Sandy H.
Oh I could go on for days!!! I made those cute purses out of used Capri Sun containers for a local craft fair. We rinse out and reuse our ziploc bags. I am a quilter and fabric can be so expensive. I am always on the lookout for throw away clothing, sheets, etc. to use for blocking!
Coffee cans and formula cans are also excellent to decorate and use for storage or gift containers.
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