Thursday, November 18, 2010

Plastic Bag Wreaths


Yesterday I made these 3 plastic bag wreaths.


It takes about 100 grocery store size plastic bags to make one wreath.


Next I embellished them with red Coke bottle caps and Christmas ribbon.


So that it is easy to hang up, I attached a plastic bottle ring to the back of the wreath with a twist tie.

How to make a plastic bag wreath:

1. Your bags need to be the same height, not width.  Example being a standard grocery store bag is the same height as a newspaper bag, but they are different widths.  If you need bags, ask your local grocery store if you can take some from their recycle bin.  I emptied out 4 grocery stores' recycle bins this week to make wreaths.

2. Cut off the handles and the bottom seam of the bags.  I like to pile the bags on top of each other, fold them, and cut several at once.  Don't throw away the handles and bottom seams.  Use them instead of packing peanuts when shipping out your holiday gifts.  You can also fuse them to make "fabric"and then sew it into a bag or whatever.

3. Scrunch the cut sides together and tie the bag in a square knot around a wreath frame.  The uncut sides should be the ends of the tied bag.  Repeat until the entire wreath is covered in plastic bags.

4. Scrunch up the bags / fluff them.  This will hide the knots and make is very full.

5. Embellish your wreath.  I hot glued on bottle caps and a bow to these ones (I made the bows).  You can check out my Valentine's wreath here.  I used fake flowers, cds, ribbon, and bottle caps to embellish it.

4 comments:

  1. I started one and then got disheartened cause I didn't like how mine looked. I must try again.

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  2. The secret is jamming as many plastic bags on the frame as possible. When I don't think that any more can fit, I pull on them and make room for 5 more bags. I'm not always completely satisfied with mine. You should try it again.

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  3. The only problem is I have to track down bags! These look wonderful thought. Once again, a great creative item.

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  4. I like to raid the grocery store's plastic bag recycle bin to get enough bags.

    ReplyDelete