Category: Recycle it

Treasure Hunt & Noisemaker

You’ll need:

•Small Soda or Water Bottle
•Rice
•Beads, Charms, Glitter, Sequins, Other Small Items
•Small Kitchen Funnel
•Craft Glue

Instructions:
Start out by cleaning the bottle well and removing the label. Make sure the bottle is totally dry before you start this project.

Place the end of the funnel into the bottle and start filling it! Start out with about a cup of rice. You can add more or less if you like. Then, start adding any small items you would like to ‘search’ for in the bottle. It can be beads, charms, small toys, etc. Make sure if young children are helping you that they do not put any of the small items in their mouth. You can also add some sparkle to your bottle by adding glitter or sequins.

Once you have everything you want in your bottle, spread some glue around the threads on the neck and replace the cap tightly. This will prevent the cap from falling off or being removed by small fingers.

In the bottle above, I added several shaped beads. They are shaped like a variety of items such as dogs, boats, hearts, starts, etc. If you add special shapes like this, your noise maker can also be a game. Challenge your child to find specific shapes or colors by rolling the bottle around to reveal hidden treasures.

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Chipmunk Glove Puppet

Gloves (like socks), while born to be part of a pair, often end their days in lonely solitude, separated from their mates by the forces of the universe that conspire at every turn to pull them apart. Alone, they sadly serve little purpose (aside from the occasional show biz appearance for only the most sparkling among them), and are left to languish in the backs of a drawers and bottoms of closets — that is, if they’re not disposed of all together. Ah… but it’s a new day.

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Coke Bottle Plant Waterer

Plastic Spoon Rose

You can use any colour spoon you want or you can also spray paint them afterwards.

see picture
– cut off the handles using scissors
– when you have 17 (10 for outer petals, 5 for petals around the 2 in the middle)

2

– Light the candle
– Take your needle nose pliers to hold the spoon.
– Try not to keep the spoon too close to the flame as it will cause blackening of the plastic.
– Melt the bowl of the spoon and heat the underside.
– let it cool down a bit but while it’s still warm and bendable shape the petal by pulling the tip and bending it backwards with your fingertips.

– You could speed the cooling down up by blowing.

Repeat- this step for all 17 petals.
3

– Beginning with the 10 outer petals take two spoons and melt what’s left of the handles. Fuse placing them next to each other and smooth out the melt until the handles stick together. You could use the needle nose pliers to do this since the melted plastic is incredibly hot!
– Repeat this 4 times so that you have 5 sets of 2 petals.
– Now melt the handles of 2 sets and stick them together.
– Repeat this step until you have the 3 pieces of the rose.

This will take a while to figure out which is the right way to assemble all pieces.
4

– Glue the pieces together with a glue gun or by melting the bottom side of the petals.

– Insert the 5 petals into the 10 petals and the 2 middle petals into the 5.

See picture.
Now that your rose is finished melt the bottom of the rose and push it flat (I used a saucer to push it flat). Once it is flat enough melt the plastic again and push a safety pin into it and secure by laying a small piece of melted plastic over the safety pin.

Optional:
Pendant – hang it onto a long jewellery chain.