Day 357: DIY Reuse Crafts

I have a backlog of topics I’ve been meaning to post about, and this is one of them: reuse craftsters.

The first example is do it yourself plastic bag bags.

Lyanda of The Tangled Nest sent me this story (and photo) about her friend, Sister Monika Ellis, who “used plastic bags to crochet a strong, beautiful, open-work bag using a free pattern she’d found on the internet.”

I actually have a similar bag (except white with colored flecks) that my friend’s mom made for my birthday, and I get compliments on it all the time.  It is super strong and perfect for the farmers market.  Plus it diverts a bunch of plastic bags (abet temporarily) from the landfill.

My second fabulous reuse example has to do with milk bottle lids.  Approximately 200 of them.

Angie is a Girl Scout Camp Co-Director down in Illinois, and, as you may know, girl guides are in the habit of crafting different types of pins to trade and put on their camp hats (I’ve been informed that they’re officially called SWAPS).

SWAPS usually have to do with the theme of the camp (I mysteriously remember having one on my hat that looked like bacon and eggs in a bottle-cap frying pan.  Maybe the theme was “food” that year).  Anyway, Angie has been planning a camp theme on geocaching, and thought the girls could make  compasses out of milk bottle lids (see her sample image to the right).

She happened to post her request on our blog, and I happened to have about 40 milk bottle lids waiting to be recycled, and so a deal was struck and the bottle caps were mailed to Illinois.

I love the thought to 200 girl guides doing compass crafting and walking around with our reused milk bottle caps on their hats!