Crafts from old things: instructions on how to use old things to create beautiful crafts, DIY work plans + 120 photos

Photo: etsy.com Surely many people don’t even realize how many useful, practical and beautiful things can be made from unnecessary things lying around. At the same time, each new product becomes unique in its own way, because you invest your personal creativity into it. In this article we will look at various options for “retraining” old things, and it’s up to you to decide whether to use the ideas or come up with something more original based on them!

The second life of obsolete things

Coco Chanel loved to repeat the witty phrase that fashion should be understood as something that constantly goes out of fashion. Frivolous extravagance became the reason that huge quantities of goods produced for the hot trend became useless to no one the very next season and went to landfill.

But this could not go on forever. Enormous resources were spent on the production of things that quickly went out of fashion, and nature’s patience is not endless. In response to this challenge, developed countries have seen a rise in demand for clothing, footwear and personal accessories made from old items and recycled waste.

Pens made from cardboard, glasses frames made from recycled plastic, sneakers made from old tires or plastic caught in the ocean, crafts made from things, and remade vintage bags have become a real fetish that costs a lot of money.

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Tags: Crafts from waste materials, Crafts from plastic bottles

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Discussion: 3 comments

1. Fields:
   July 13, 2022 at 8:12 am

   How I like things made “out of nothing”, what imagination people have!

   Answer

2. Gena:

   July 7, 2022 at 01:28 pm

   Cool, can I still participate?

   Answer

3. Alina:

   June 15, 2022 at 6:58 am

   Crafts made from recycled materials are a fun way to keep your child creative without having to buy special kits and materials. And such scope for imagination and development of imagination!

   Answer

Some statistics

Over the course of a year, only one resident of the Russian Federation throws out up to 400 kg of solid household waste, and less than 30% of this amount is recycled. Vast areas are allocated for landfills, which after some time become polluted with toxic decay products. If you compare Russia with Sweden, where only 1% of the waste that technologists have failed to recycle is disposed of in landfills, you might be horrified.

Make your contribution

Since technologies for mass recycling of trash and garbage are in their infancy, each of us is simply obliged to make a contribution to this noble cause to help the planet recover.

Create crafts from unnecessary things that you can use to decorate your home or cottage. Dress in crafts made from old clothes to give your clothes a chance to serve you for another period.

Topiary ideas

Green sculptures were made by masters of garden landscapes to decorate parks, squares, and alleys. Today, an amazing bush (tree) can be made from various means.

Waste material is no exception. Similar products are used to decorate the interior of homes, offices, and various public events.

Crafts made from waste materials are a very interesting design for kindergarten.

Play areas with bright bushes made by the hands of teachers and children look unusual. And it’s not difficult to do this:

The base of the crown is made of ordinary newsprint, carefully crumpled and scrupulously wrapped with strong thread for strength.

Flowers are made of corrugated paper; alternatively, you can use magazine sheets with bright illustrations.

For grass, use serpentine, decorative tape in different shades of green.

Any plastic container can become a wonderful flower pot. The design will be dictated by the children's imagination.

To ensure that the toparium stands steadily in the pot, it can be filled with disused plasticine.

This craft is a wonderful gift for mothers on March 8th.

Having collected a huge number of ideas and proposals for making crafts from waste material on the theme of the approaching summer, you can release more than one volume.

For example, an amazing homemade “Summer Flowerbed” made from scrap materials that most likely no one even thinks about.

Summer is a period when a huge amount of ice cream and muffins are eaten, washed down with delicious fruit and berry juices.

You just have to look around carefully and collect the necessary materials: paper cupcake wrappers, ice cream sticks, various decor, buttons, beads, paints, scissors, glue.

Sticks are painted in bright colors (not necessarily green). The paint is applied in two layers. Paper cupcake tins are painted in exactly the same way.

The middle of the flower is a beautiful button or shiny bead. Leaves are cut out of paper. They can be different in shades and shapes.

Such an applique can be inserted into a frame, and it will remind you of a fun summer for a long time.

By choosing equipment made from waste material for needlework, parents will help their kids treat the surrounding nature with care and at the same time develop creative skills, imagination, and teach them to see beauty in the most ordinary objects.

Let's start handicrafts

From any things that have lost their relevance, you can create something new and useful. Dozens of items pass through our homes that can be used as raw materials for DIY junk crafts:

1. Various containers - cardboard boxes for eggs, buckets for mayonnaise, marmalade, sauerkraut, etc.
2. Disposable tableware and cutlery.
3. Covered pens, felt-tip pens and markers.
4. Buttons on old unused items.
5. Glass and tin jars.
6. Bottles from beer, wine, corks and twists.
7. Burnt out light bulbs, etc.

Treat used things with love, take a closer look at how they can serve you in a new capacity, and you will have an inexhaustible source of inspiration.

Pet suitcase

Old-style traveling suitcases are not particularly popular today, because new mobile accessories (on wheels) have appeared on the product market. You should not hastily get rid of a bulky item, especially if there is a pet (dog or cat) in the house.

The inner walls of the suitcase should be thoroughly cleaned; you can soak the surface with an antiseptic. Next, you should sew a soft mattress and place it on the bottom of the new bed. The hinged lid can be removed, or you can decorate it in an original way.

Ideas

Let's think about what kind of crafts we could make from old things with our own hands.

1. An unusual wall clock, the dial of which is decorated with disposable forks and spoons.
2. A panel of multi-colored buttons of different sizes.
3. Animal figures made from plastic bottles.
4. DIY crafts from old clothes: an organizer made from pockets from jackets and jeans sewn onto a piece of denim, curtains made from scraps.
5. A dressing table on a stand or a wall-mounted bar from an old suitcase.
6. If you wash deep cans and poke holes at the top edge with an awl, they can be hung in a row on hooks, forming a convenient storage for screwdrivers, wrenches, markers, and pencils for the garage.
7. Plastic buckets can be used for growing plants on windowsills, and their lids can serve as stands for these pots.
8. If you cut off the necks of plastic bottles, you will get an ideal container for growing tomato seedlings for the garden.
9. Cut off the sides of old canisters, place them in a row on a shelf in the garage, and you will have a large number of drawers for tools, various parts, and rags.
10. Glass jars with screw-on lids make excellent storage for screws, nails, and self-tapping screws. You just need to screw the lids with screws from the underside of the wooden shelf, and screw the jars with fasteners onto the threads from below.
11. You won’t believe it, but even old unnecessary crutches can be used, from which craftsmen have learned to make bookcases, connecting the crutches at the top with a tapering side. It will not be difficult to cut the shelves to the desired size and secure them to wooden supports.
12. Wine corks make original keychains; you just need to somehow secure the ring in the cork array.

What to make from coconut shells

It turns out there are a lot of things. Here are 5 smart ideas.

Turtle ashtray. Or a vase for small items. It looks extraordinary.

Candlestick. Unusual decor.

House in an aquarium. Beauty!

And what kind of cutie lives here? Syrian hamster. But you can house a dwarf, a mouse or a gerbil. The main thing is to give everyone a separate house.

Or you can make a cup. Use as a dish or stand.

Mini fountain

The passion of amateur flower growers for old car tires is well known. In cities, many front gardens in front of entrances are decorated with painted wheels. Tree seedlings are planted inside the slopes and flower beds are arranged.

And at the dacha, you can build a decent pond from an old tire by cutting off half the rubber and creating waterproofing using a sheet of plastic film.

If you then pour water into it and place a small nozzle in the center that sprays water in tiers, foam or colorful splashes, you will get an amazing mini-country fountain. Plant it on all sides with ornamental plants, and here you have a ready-made oasis.

Smartphone holders in 5 minutes

Perhaps almost everyone has a smartphone. But there are no holders for them. What if you need it, but don’t buy it by hand? Easily!

This is the kind of holder made from office clips in one minute. But take stronger clamps so that they hold well.

A sleeve and 4 stationery needles will also work well. You can paint it to your taste.

Another option: you will need a pen and some reliable clothespins.

A convenient pocket for charging a smartphone can be easily cut out of an empty shampoo or shower gel package.

And if you have some fabric and a love for needlework, you can sew such a pocket.

Flowers in old jeans

One of the fashion trends in the design of summer cottages is the use of old jeans as a soil bag. After filling the jeans with soil, lush plants are planted on top. If you put several of these blooming jeans in a row, it turns out very cute and fun.

Note!

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Marker holder

A creative drawing corner for a child requires containers in which pencils, markers and much more are stored. Giving old things a second life and getting different options for holders is quite easy and simple.

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Leaky kitchen utensils

Leaky pots, basins, bowls, boilings and teapots will not have to be scrapped when there is a dacha where there will always be a use for them.

Having painted the container with intricate script, you can plant any plant of suitable size inside, filling the entire volume with soil.

Plates with chips for the kitchen

If the chip on the plate is small, you can disguise it with acrylic paint. Plates stacked together (bottom to bottom) can turn into an original fruit bowl.

First, the surface of the dish should be decorated and covered with transparent acrylic varnish, and the adjacent edges should be joined with strong glue (for example, a polyurethane adhesive base). Any guest will appreciate the appearance and shape of the new vase.

Bath - a man-made pond

If during the renovation process it is planned to replace an exhausted bathtub with a more modern one, the old bathtub can be used as a water-tight bowl for a small pond. You will need to tightly plug the drain hole, deepen the bath into the ground, having previously prepared a small pit.

Plant the resulting pond with perennials, ferns and shrubs to breathe life into the composition. The result will be an original element of landscape design.

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Ideas using old disposable dishes

Using old aluminum forks or spoons, you can make simple and original hooks for towels or things.

Of course, there is no doubt that such inventions will not be appropriate in a classic modern style. But for a high-tech designer style, in a truly rural direction, this is a real find. For example, at the dacha, this idea is simply irreplaceable.

Exclusive wickets and gates

One of the best examples of DIY crafts from unnecessary things is welded country gates and gates from used shovels, pruning shears, axes, chains, gears, barn locks, keys, broken screwdrivers, in a word, any metal rubbish that has accumulated on a personal plot for years.

All this scrap metal is picturesquely located inside a metal frame and welded to adjacent elements using an amateur welding machine.

The result exceeds all expectations: the result is real masterpieces of modern creativity, which is easy to verify by examining the search results for the Internet query “do-it-yourself crafts from unnecessary things photo.”

If such a gate made from shovels, tailor’s scissors, pot lids, a meat grinder, rakes and bicycle stars is displayed in a museum of modern art, no one will even suspect that this is the work of an amateur gardener. By the way, using the same technology you can weld an amazingly beautiful country table from old metal products.

Tubes of shampoo, balm or cream

The container can be from almost any cosmetic product. The main thing is that it should have an elongated shape. The top part is cut off. The edges do not need to be straight. They can be pointed or rounded.

These holders can be decorated in completely different ways. Eyes, nose and even teeth are made with colored paper. You can cut out the mouth. To hold the product comfortably, double-sided tape is glued to the back or holes are made for nails.

Old belts

Over the years, every family accumulates a considerable number of old belts with loose holes, damaged buckles, and frayed seam threads. You can try making the back and seat of a country chaise lounge out of aluminum tubes, intertwining the straps with each other.

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And the old suitcase will come in handy

If you have an old suitcase lying around, don’t rush to send it to a landfill, because it can become an excellent base for creating a lot of useful things. For example, in a short period of time you can turn it into a cozy abode for your pet by equipping it with a warm blanket and legs.

If you get serious about decorating - paint the outer sides of the doors, open them with varnish, and cover the inner sides with fabric or wallpaper, then you can turn a suitcase into a luxurious antique-style box for children's toys.

An old suitcase can also be repurposed into a gorgeous coffee table that will suit any traveler's interior. To do this, you need to clean the item well, perhaps paint it or decorate it using decoupage technique, or open it with varnish. If the suitcase doors are soft, you will need plywood inserts on the inside.

Photo: zen.yandex.ru Photo: odstroy.ru Photo: marremont.ru Photo: ices.ge Photo: zen.yandex.ru Photo: pol-master.com

Plastic bottles

Practice DIY crafts made from plastic bottles more often to give a second life to things.

Using a simple device, a plastic bottle can be dissolved into long thin strips, which are later used to create trellises for tomatoes and cucumbers, braid flower pots, and weave rugs.

Collect bottle caps, which you can use to create amazing panels on the walls of your country house. In addition to the fact that such paintings will win you the reputation of a creative person among all your neighbors, traffic jams will also enhance sound insulation and keep the house warm on cool nights.

Whole plastic bottles make beautiful garden arches and decorative compositions. Bottle bottoms can be used to pave a garden path.

By making side cutouts in the bottles, you can grow flowers there. And by tying the bottles one above the other horizontally, you can create high vertical beds for strawberries and strawberries.

Hot coasters and mats

Things needed in everyday life. And often not only in the kitchen, but also at the desk, in the living room. Rate 5 creative ideas.

Coasters for glasses made of felt.

Coaster made from wine corks.

An excellent rug can be sewn from leftover fabrics.

You can also make an interesting stand out of jute. Do-it-yourself natural decor in a popular eco-style.

And here is a rug for dishes made from jeans. Looks original.

Interesting solutions

Any household inevitably accumulates used equipment, clothing, and household items. By creating crafts with your own hands from old things, you will add zest to the interior and acquire original personal accessories that can surprise anyone.

1. Lampshades made from cut wine bottles.
2. A bar counter made from an ironing board and a glass holder made from an old rake.
3. Thermal support made from wine corks.
4. Bottle holder made from bent vinyl records.
5. Flower pots made from clothespins.
6. Pictures of unnecessary keys, parts of damaged watches and alarm clocks.
7. Artificial roses, peonies, daisies, sunflowers from cut plastic containers.
8. Sand paintings, ship models inside bottles.
9. A bed for a cat or dog made from a pillow and a worn-out sweater.
10. Photo frame made from outdated jewelry.
11. Many man-made elements, such as antique lighting fixtures, spare parts, and wooden pallets, are deliberately used by interior designers when creating loft-style interiors. Here, in general, the more factory junk, the more elegant and prestigious it is considered.

Conscious consumption

People make many decisions in life out of habit, as if they were living one day at a time, without thinking about the consequences. At the same time, the strategy of conscious consumption has the power to transform life on the entire planet for the better.

In the 19th century, fashion was “slow”. Suits and dresses were made to order according to established patterns, the materials were quite expensive so that the owners of the clothes did not waste things.

With the advent of large factories that produced clothes using an assembly line method, it became possible to sew large orders designed for only one or two seasons - according to the current fashion for color, cut, and finishing features. As a result, the fruits of fast fashion accumulate in closets for decades, saturated with the aromas of mothballs.

But think: in order to produce just one T-shirt, which will no longer be worn after a season, the industry must take 2.7 thousand liters of water from nature! Let's feel sorry for the planet and ourselves, because soon clean water and air will remain only in protected areas at the edge of the world!

About the disadvantages of a world of abundance

It seems that the “know how to sew” option was built into our mothers and grandmothers by default: they could turn old tulle curtains into Snowflake’s outfit, alter men’s trousers “to suit themselves” and create a whole wardrobe for a doll from a heap of scraps. Creativity as a vital necessity was a side effect of the era of total unification and scarcity - the need for invention is cunning!

And we live in a world of abundance. And although many of us still studied cutting and sewing in labor lessons, few decided to bring this to the level of a working skill. Why, when you can buy absolutely everything? And with some frenzy we plunged into the world of possibilities and constantly updated offers: having hidden on the mezzanine of consciousness a bunch of complexes from a “deficient” childhood, we act out successful scenarios on our offspring, because all the best goes to the children! Even if half the salary is spent on the “best”, and the child begins to perceive all these outfits as disposable.

But if you look at it, children have nothing to do with it: they do not choose playmates based on their clothes and generally don’t worry too much about their appearance, if you don’t focus their attention on it. We dress up children solely to raise our own self-esteem: I can afford it, I care, I have taste. And it is for this feeling that we pay money when buying another pretty suit.

Photos of crafts from old things