Recycle Medicine Cartons into Stationery Holders

What do you do with medicine cartons lying at your homes? Throw them away or reuse and recycle them? Cartons, like these used to package medicine, toothpastes, shaving creams, gels, shampoos, etc. are more often thrown away since many of us don't know how to make use of them. Earlier I have posted a tutorial on recycling a shaving cream carton into a stationery holder and decorating it with origami. You can view the tutorial on that previous post by clicking on this link here.

Recycling cartons into stationery holders

Here's, another easy tutorial which even kids can try at home or schools, and play their roles in recycling paper. Just be sure that they are clean and safe to be used for craft purpose. We would rather throw away those cartons which still retain odor of medicines or food stuff.

Below are some medicine cartons that were used for this tutorial. The size of these containers is about 6.5cm x 5cm with a height of @14cm. They can be conveniently used to hold stationeries like pencils, scales, scissors, sketch pens, etc.

Medicine Cartons for recycling purpose

Materials required: Medicine carton, glue, scissor, paper for wrapping, sketch pens or color pencils for decoration.

Material used: Paper, carton, glue, scissor

Procedure:
Firstly, remove the top flaps of the carton using a scissor as shown below.

Remove the top flaps of the empty container/carton

Now take any paper for wrapping around the carton. You can use a gift wrapping paper, or any other decorative paper to give it a more appealing look. Here, we have used a white A4 sized printer paper. which suits the size of this medicine carton. Cut along the edges as shown.

A4 size printer paper for wrapping the medicine carton

Apply glue as you keep wrapping it around the box.

Wrapping the medicine carton with paper.

Note the steps for sealing or covering the bottom side of the box. Apply glue, and overlap one flap over the other till all the flaps cover the bottom side of the carton.

Seal the bottom of the medicine carton

Once all the flaps are glued, the bottom side is neatly sealed and covered as shown in the picture below.

Bottom side of the carton is neatly covered

For the open side on the top, apply glue to the flaps and keep gluing them to the inner edges of the carton as shown below.

The top open side of the carton

Apply glue to the flaps,
fold them down to cover the inner edges

This is how it would look after they are neatly covered with a clean sheet. You can decorate them further with sketch pens or color pencils as you wish. 

Stationery Holder ready to use

In case you have many such cartons, you can simply join them by using a clear tape, and then cover them up with gift wrapping paper of your choice.

Join two or more cartons with a tape

Stationery holders from medicine cartons

You can recycle such cartons into beautiful stationery holders that can be incorporated into the kids' rooms or art & craft rooms. Once, you have covered these cartons with a plain sheet, ask your kids to paint or decorate these cartons, and you will see that they will gleefully oblige. 

Hope you like this tutorial. Keep visiting our blog for more such ideas.

Here's a quick link to the same tutorial on our youtube channel.

Thank you for stopping by.

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Paper Collages from Paper Scraps: Easy DIY Ideas

Have loads of paper scrap and don't know what to do. Throw them away...no...here are some creative ideas to help you use these very paper scraps to make something beautiful...some artwork from scraps and they indeed look beautiful.

We have loads of these colored printer paper wastes that were leftover from our previous art & craft classes, workshops and more...we never throw away things easily..call it being thrifty or whatever...but there have been times when these paper scraps have helped us create beautiful things in the past. As you scroll down below you will see many examples, which were made by us during some boring afternoon, when we had nothing better to do!

What you see in the picture below is just a glimpse...we have a big carton full of these paper scraps.

Paper Scraps

Here, is what we tried one afternoon, using the above paper scraps that were leftover after we cut out small flowers using a craft paper punch.

Flower with a butterfly from Paper scraps

For the above example of the Flower with the butterfly, we tore the paper scraps and shaped them with our hands only, no scissors or any other tools were used. After cutting out the desired shapes we simply glued them onto an A5 size card paper so that we could use it as a greeting card. 

A Bee and a Flower from paper scraps

In the above example, we have used colored printer paper wastes combined with newspaper scraps too. For this, we used a pair of scissors to cut out every element from the paper scraps and then glued these shapes onto a paper.

A Girl and a Rose from paper scraps

For the Girl and the rose in the above example, we tore out paper strips from the paper scraps we had and didn't use any other tool. The rose was just created by tearing out the paper...Purely an artwork with hands!

Paper Collage of Mowgli and Shanti from paper scraps

For the above paper collage of Mowgli and Shanti, we roughly sketched out the outlines of Mowgli and Shanti with the pitcher in hand. Thereafter, we tore out pieces from the paper scraps and glued them following the pencil outline, adding on details like the shrub, sky etc. later.

A Peacock from paper scraps

For peacock above, we drew the shape on the paper scraps, then cut them out with a pair of scissors. We started with the peacock's body in the center, and thereafter added the double layer of feathers. You will also spot a small earthworm near the peacock's legs!

A Tree from paper scraps

For the tree, we cut out the trunk from a newspaper and then glued on paper strips of different colors for the tree's foliage.

These paper collages can be used as greeting cards or posters, or you can just frame them and hang them on the walls.

Hope the above examples, help you in some way or the other, to make use of paper scraps instead of throwing them away. It's a small attempt from our side to reuse and recycle paper and hope it serves as an inspiration to create things from paper wastes or scraps.

Do leave your comments, ideas or suggestions and share these ideas with your friends.

Thank you for stopping by...

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