How-To: Turn Bags into Beads

I've become somewhat of a curator of plastic bags. In fact, there are some doors you shouldn't open in my house because you will be buried under an avalanche of interesting plastic. Primarily, I fuse these bags into collages and turn them into other things like: BEADS.

If you would like to transform your own collection of plastic bags into beads, follow these instructions:

Materials

• Clean plastic bag


• Parchment paper


• Iron


• E6000 or similar glue


• Toothpicks


• Scissors


• Ruler

Fusing the Plastic

Place two layers of plastic between two sheets of parchment on a hard surface and iron them together using a low setting with the steam set to off.

That will leave you with a sheet that looks like this:


Making the Bead

Cut out a triangular shape that is about 4 inches long and 1/2 inch wide at the bottom. You can play around with the sizing. The wider the triangle, the longer the bead and the longer the triangle, the fatter the bead.

With a toothpick, apply a thin layer of E6000 or similar glue to one side of your triangle. Leave a small strip free of glue at the base of the triangle. Place a clean toothpick at the base and roll up the triangle around the toothpick so it shapes an oval bead. Jiggle the toothpick a little to make sure that it doesn't stick to the bead.

Leave the toothpick in the bead and stick it into something to dry overnight. I used a dried out bit of Model Magic clay, but any kind of Styrofoam, etc. will work as well.

Once your bead is dry you can lacquer it or leave it as is and use it in a project like this:


or this:

Happy Recycling!

Simone
groundsel.etsy.com

Thinking Green - Let's Reuse Plastic Bags

Let's aim to keep the world as green as this painting of a tree that I created:

In the past couple of days, I have been reading articles on the internet about ways to reuse plastic bags.
I thought that I had come up with every idea associated with reusing plastic bags.
I am happy to say that I was mistaken and that I acquired new tips for the reuse of plastic bags.

I love the ideas put forth in this article, for reusing plastic grocery bags.


Here is another link to tips for reusing plastic bags.

From now on, I will continue to reuse plastic bags to:
-line the garbage bins in my house

I also plan to reuse plastic bags for packing my paintings.

Here is an article on repurposing plastic bags that I found in the Etsy blog. It's a good read.
Plastic bags may be used to create craft items, too!

by
Nina Kuriloff