Recycle a plastic bottle for planting

The lockdown period due to Covid 19, has turned out to be very fruitful for all those who wished to learn something new but never had the time to do it. It has made us realize that life has many facets and each one has to be lived with, whether you like it or not, you can't run away from it. 

So while we are trying to make maximum utilization of our time, we are also learning the importance of the environment. We are trying to value our time, interacting and spending more time with our family members.

Just as we try to deal with the pandemic, slowly trying to move ahead with our lives, here's a small tutorial on reusing and recycling a plastic bottle for planting saplings. 

"1...2...3...Let's plant a tree"...that's our slogan for the activity today.

"1,2,3...Lets plant a tree"

Materials required:

1. Plastic bottle (any juice bottle or bottled water container).
2. Sapling of your choice
3. Fertilized soil for filling up the container

As shown in the picture below, we planted a marigold sapling in a small plastic juice bottle. We cut out the bottom part of the bottle, filled it up with fertilized soil and got a sapling from our neighborhood to be planted in the container. We also made small holes (say around 3-4) at the bottom of the bottle to allow excess water to drain out from the bottom.

Recycled plastic bottle for planting a sapling

Materials required to decorate the plastic bottle:

1. paper cuttings
2. white glue 
3. water colors/poster colors
4. brushes

As shown in the picture below, first we stuck paper all over the bottle surface using white glue. 

Paper mache over the plastic bottle

Then we painted the entire bottle with shades of red, orange and yellow as shown below in the picture. 

Recycled plastic bottle for planting

Hope you also try innovative ways to use and recycle plastic wastes and do something about reducing carbon footprints rather than just sitting and complaining.

Hope you find our tutorial useful. Thank you for stopping by...

Penguin Craft: Recycling Plastic

I was just sifting through my craft archive folders on my laptop when I came across this beautiful recycling project we attempted during our last summer break. We recycled a plastic bottle into a decorative penguin model. It was a very easy recycling project and my kid who was just 7 years old back then had great fun while modeling the Penguin.

Materials required for the Penguin Craft:

Plastic bottle (flat shaped as you see in the picture below), newspaper scraps, white glue, water, poster colors, paint brushes, crepe paper, string.

Procedure: 

Step 01: 

Prepare the surface of the bottle to apply paper mache to its surface. All you need to do is keep the surface of the bottle clean.

Step 02:

Tear some newspaper scraps that you would need to apply on the bottle surface. Keep the white glue or mod podge ready. We added white glue and water in the proportion of 1:2.

Step 03:
Apply the glue paste or mod podge on the bottle surface.

Step 04:

Quickly glue the newspaper sheets on the glue surface before the glue starts drying. Be quick while you do this step. You can also apply glue to the paper and then paste it on the bottle surface. 

Step 05:
Cover up the entire surface of the bottle with newspaper. We applied two layers of newspaper coating to the entire surface of the bottle.

Step 06:

We let the paper coating on the bottle to dry for a day. Once the surface had dried we smoothened the surface with sand paper. Thereafter we painted the bottle with poster colors.

Step 07:

Now, to cover up the top of the bottle, we made a pom-pom from crepe paper. For making the pom-pom, we cut the crepe paper into small strips.

Step 08:
Take the crepe paper strips and double them up as shown in the picture below.

Step 09: 
Take a string and tie the center as shown.

Step 10: 
Cut off the extra string.

Step 11:

Rearrange the strips such that the string tied at the center is hidden amongst the paper strips.

Step 12:

We painted the penguin with white color on the front side and painted black on the remaining sides. Also, we painted a red woolen cap with a yellow border, tied a bow with a red satin ribbon and lastly, glued the crepe paper pompom on the top, and tada...our cute little penguin is ready to walk the ramp!

Hope this tutorial is helpful. Let us know if you try making this one. Your feedback is appreciated.

Thank you for stopping by.

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