Art Creations From Trash
As a self-proclaimed environment advocate, I will share with you some art crafts made from trash (sort of). Most of the materials used are leftovers which will end up in the trash bin sooner or later. Some of the art crafts are made by following the instructions from other blogs that talked about reusing plastic bottles. Others are from my imaginative mind (or maybe from the information about recycling and reusing what was retained in my brain).
Below are the photos (please ignore the quality because I used a very “low tech” camera) of my art crafts when I was in college. Some are made to fulfill a requirement of a subject and others are made out of boredom. I hate throwing away things which I think can still be recycled and reused too.
This object called pen vase (with my initials) is made from springs of notebooks (because I usually replace the springs with yarns), a left-over cartolina (from the report I made) and glitters (from my sister who’s pursuing brain-draining graduate course).
If you have notebooks (with springs) that you’re not using anymore and you have transparent tape (for binding), you can try making this art craft. You don’t need glitters to have a nice output. It’s all about creativity. Let that artistic “you” explore ways to make your work beautiful without spending money.
They call this styro cup lamp. This is made from white styro cups glued together to form a half-oval. This was supposed to be made with whole cups, but we (I and my groupmates) ran out of cups, so we decided to cut them into half to achieve the half-oval shape. We did not intend to put a bulb in it, but it was very ugly, and cannot be called a lamp without a light so we end up putting a bulb. Nobody’s an electrical student in our group, but I learned from my father who studied electronics before (as his hobby). We were not satisfied with the outcome so we tried putting some colored papers hoping they will work well with the white bulb and give some colors, but it just prevented the light from coming out (Yes, I was so dumb not knowing that obvious outcome). Fortunately, someone in the group has left-over paints and she offered that we use those, so we did. That’s why the 3rd and last photo has black and pink colors. We changed the bulb too. The yellow light gives a beautiful effect compared to the white and bright light.
This is how it looked when I tried to hang it. The effects cannot be seen because of the light from outside the room.
Unfortunately, I saw burned parts of this about a year after we submitted it in partial fulfillment of a subject. That leads me to ask a favor to all the teachers who often require their students to do some art crafts in the subject they teach. Please return your pupils'/students' outputs. No matter how ugly their work in your judgment, they still put money and effort to create it. How will you feel seeing the project you’ve been working for several days (with a few periods of sleep) just to finish on time destroyed in front of you?
(If you can relate to this experience, leave a reaction below.)
Made From Plastic Bottles
Bangles were famous in the year we created those items in the photo above and below. Most of these bangles were sold at around Php 25.00 each during a product expo in our college. The two bangles below are my favorites. I’m not sure where they are now because as far as I remembered they were not sold. Hopefully, they were not burned like what happened to the lamp because I am proud of these art crafts considering they are made from plastic bottles and unused/damaged clothes.
The item below is inspired by what was called a dome. I watched a tutorial in creating Christmas gifts for a subject to share the procedure with my classmates in the form of a presentation (often called a report). I don’t have a budget to buy the materials in making a dome so I ended up using a plastic bottle (supposed to be a transparent glass). The black part at the bottom is made of the thinly cut plastic bottle covered with yarn, and the blue object is a button from a dress. The figurine inside it was from my friend in elementary. It’s about 11 years ago when she gave it as a remembrance. We don’t have any contact now, but I’ll treasure everything.
I need a stand to put the instructions I wrote in a recycled carton when I saw my collection of plastic bottles, but an empty bottle cannot stand alone. Luckily, there were some gravel and stones around which was used in the construction of our room. That’s how the object below was made. Sometimes I use them like a dumbbell when I want to lift weights and don’t want to be exhausted.
Other Stuff Made from Trash
Maybe you are wondering why a tape is placed beside that pen vase (or maybe not?). The reason for that is, that pen vase is made from that material (two emptied roll of tape to be exact). It was just covered with a cloth from shorts my cousin gave to me.
These are unfinished stuff that I did not plan to finish. They serve their purpose (as pen vase and note board), so there’s no need to enhance them (in my opinion).
