• artsy fartsy,  domesticity

    The Fifth Craft: Plastic Bag Napkin Rings!

    upcycled!

    I got a little ahead of myself and twittered and facebooked about five crafts but I hadn’t gotten to this one yet. So HERE is the fifth craft: These are happy little challah bread napkin rings made from recycled plastic trash bags! They don’t exactly look like Challah Bread but they are braided and a whole lot prettier than the plastic bag they came from.

    As everyone knows plastic bags blow. However! They are actually quite wonderful as a crafting medium. You can make all sorts of things with them: rope, crocheted into a bag, fused together as fabric…the possibilities are amazing.

    Here’s how I made napkin rings:

    cutting up the plastic bag

    First you’ll need the tan colored ones. These are not as common as they used to be. In my town everyone has switched to white for some reason. But check around, they still exist in MASSIVE quantities, probably in your own garage, pantry or under-the-sink hidey hole.

    strips for braiding

    Next smooth out your bag of any creases and cut it into three strips. Don’t worry about the handle portions being longer. You’ll trim the excess off later.

    fusing

    Next you’ll need to “fuse” the ends together so you can start your braid. To do this you will need a hot iron and some tinfoil. Fold your tinfoil over a couple times so that there will be two sheets between your iron and the plastic bag strips. Now, very carefully, hold the iron down on the tinfoil in 15-second increments until it fuses. (Be careful not to touch the plastic with your iron or you’ll have a messy clean-up job later.)

    braiding

    Now it’s time to braid!

    braid

    Braid about six or seven inches and stop. Give yourself about a half inch of unbraided ends and then trim the excess off with scissors.

    fusing the circle together

    Wrap your braid into a circle big enough for a cloth napkin to slip through and then carefully insert your tinfoil and iron onto the loose ends using your tinfoil. You might need to fold the tinfoil into a triangle to fit it inside the napkin right. Repeat the ironing technique used above and fuse your ring together.

    tah dah!

    Voila! You have a fancy napkin ring and you saved the landfills from one more plastic trash bag! Isn’t that a great way to start off the new year? L’Shanah Tovah!

  • Alpha+Mom post,  elsewhere!,  Shiksa post

    Happy Rosh Hashanah!

    paper necklace

    Tomorrow is the beginning of Rosh Hashanah and boy do we have the Rosh Hashanah crafts for you! We’ve been working overtime and we’re not even Jewish! But they are fun no matter what your religious beliefs are.

    First we have Apple Honey cupcakes over on The Shiksa:

    Happy Rosh Hashanah!

    They are delicious!

    Then we have some cool pomegranate cards made from stamping potatoes and a pencil eraser over on Alpha+Mom:

    L' Shannah Tovah!

    Please comment if you have the time, that post is feeling like nobody loves it.

    correspondence

    I think they turned out pretty neat and would be fun to send any time of the year.

    Then we have a good old-fashioned crayon-wax-paper stained-glass fish craft over on The Shiksa:

    girl and her fish puppet

    Bug got a kick out of that one.

    swish swish

    And lastly (but not really lastly because I have one more up my sleeve for this blog) we have a coloring sheet that you can make into a necklace or a memory game on The Shiksa again!

    L' Shanah Tovah!

    Can you tell I love my new job? AND! I’m going to be posting twice a month now Alpha Mom too. Crafts for the win!