Showing posts with label Plastic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Plastic. Show all posts

Friday, March 11, 2016

Trash chique! Shrinking plastic trash into jewelry.



I pride myself for making things out of trash. Thing is, usually the materials I use are not exactly trash. Tacky, old and unloved maybe... but if you can still find it in a thrift shop, it's not trash, is it?

Well, today that is going to change: I'm going to make jewelry from plastic that I actually saved form my garbage bin. Yucky, you say?
No!!
Behold the magic of shrinking plastic!!

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Experiments. Painting on plastic: the ugly duckling brush

We all have those items in our home that are useful, but not specifically pretty. In my case a hot-pink plastic brush. It originates from my days as a student, and I think my mum bought it for me, since I can't imagine having bought something this pink for myself (sorry mum!) It once matched an equally hot-pink plastic dustpan, which has now magically disappeared. I still use it quite a lot. Unfortunately, I really have outgrown hot pink, but since I hate throwing away something that still works perfectly fine, I figured: Why not paint it?


In general plastic is not a material that easily allows you to paint it. The surface doesn't absorb the paint, thus the paint stays as a layer on top of it, which usually ends in a misery of scratching, flaking and horrors alike. But with some experimenting I've done over the past years (read: failing a lot of times), I learned that it can be done if you consider several guidelines.

For those of you who are now wondering: why spend so much energy a brush that costs only €1? You are right. But it was an experiment to see how easily you can paint on plastic items. And since I only used materials that I had leftover from painting the house, so it didn't cost me a thing. If you do buy a whole can of paint for a brush, I suggest you paint a frickin' masterpiece on it to make it worthwhile. Got something ugly that you want to paint? Here we go!