I would like to encourage children to follow the 3 R’s – Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Therefore the theme for our craft activities this year is Recycling is Cool! We are going to use recycling and natural material in our craft activities so that children will use their creative ideas and make some beautiful things to take home and be proud of themselves. I picked up some really good ideas during my travels in Charlottetown and I would like to share them with you.
Do you have any plastic ice cream container or an old pile with a lid lying around at home?
Bingo! You have just made a beautiful paper waste basket for your room.
With some thin ropes and small pieces of ribbon,
an empty jar gets a second life as an elegant
candle holder.
With some silver paint and a glass container, you can turn a few branches into a beautiful centre piece!
These tree branch centre pieces and glass jar candle holders were used in a graduation dinner held at the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown.
Who thought you can turn old newspaper into such nice and useful gift bags?
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| Planters made from old plastic containers |
Painted plastic containers make a colourful decorative container garden.
From the Murphy's Community Centre in Charlottetown.
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| Planters made from recycled tires |
Lots of ugly old tires lying in you yard and you are sick and tired of seeing them?
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| Planters made from painted recycled tires - Harbourfront, Toronto |
Just give them a couple coats of paint!
They could be easily transformed into colourful planters!
Any old container can be recycled into a planter such as this old metal container we saw in Kensington Market in Toronto on the right picture.
Landscaping your house or business does not need to cost you an arm and leg. We saw an excellent idea at Kensington Market.
Fill a number of plastic containers with soils and plants growing in them, then put together a bench with some old lumber, cut holes in them and set the planters in the bench. It will dress up the entrance to your business or home right away like this one below.
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| Plastic pails and buckets are recycled into planters that dressed up a store front in Toronto |
How about a twig flower basket?
When you are out for walks, gather dead wood branches from neighbourhood parks and cut them into various length.
Arrange and nail together to make a beautiful basket that costs nothing!
Arrange and nail together to make a beautiful basket that costs nothing!
A painting on an old window or a drawing of a horse or any animal makes a rustic wall hanging in your home.
Are you handy with a hammer and a saw?
You can turn wood branches into a real nice outdoor love seat!
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| A planter made from old branches |
Or you can turn the branches into a rustic and beautiful planter!
We saw this homemade planter simply cut and nailed together outside a house in Cambridge, Ontario.
There were no special joints, grooves or anything. Just nails holding this planter together to welcome the coming of the fall season.
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| Plant stand |
Another nice piece I saw was a plant stand, made from twigs and branches, not too hard to be put together.
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Washroom Signs for Females in Algonquin Park, Ontario
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Try your hands at creating rustic and beautiful door signs and decorations such as these pieces.
We saw them in Algonquin Park, Ontario, Canada.
Loved these rustic signs!!!
Here is one for the guys!!!
Do you have an old lamp you are tired of?
Don't junk it!
Decorate an old lamp and spruce it up with some branches picked up from your walk in the forest.
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| A kitchen towel rod made from a branch |
Do you need a towel rod in your kitchen?
No need to go shopping for one.
A small tree branch will do the job with no problem.
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| A curtain rod made from a branch |
Do you need a curtain rod?
Pick up a branch and hang it up above your window and bingo!!
You 'll have an instant curtain rod!
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| A door handle made from a twig |
Those small fallen tree branches would decorate your door nicely:
Use some small branches to make a door sign for the Shower.
Then use another curvy branch to make a handle for the door as well.
What an excellent idea!!!
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| A bench in Central Park, New York City |
In Central Park, New York City, tired visitors really appreciated this comfortable bench made from 100% hard wood!
We tries it and it was comfortable!!!
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| An Archway made of Tree Trunks and Branches with a Roof made of Bark Pieces - Waterloo, Ontario |
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| A lamp post and flower pot hanger - Quebec, Canada |
On our trip out eastern Canada, in a small Quebec town, we relaxed in a beautiful country garden and saw this beautiful lamp post with hooks for hanging plants made out of a tree trunk.
With the variety of solar outdoor lamp available, it would be easy to attach a lantern on an old tree trunk!
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| A functional side table or coffee table for a living room |
With some elbow grease and creativity, someone created this rustic and beautiful side table from a log that can really be functional in a living room.
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| A comfortable bench from old tree trunks, Grand Canyon, USA |
At Grand Canyon, USA, one could find benches like this made from big logs.
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| Huntsville, Ontario |
In Huntsville, Ontario ( where Goldie Hawk has a mansion cottage and vacations in the summer), a cottager created this welcoming structure with tree pieces.
What a great idea to use those old trees felled by storms!
Take a closer look at the pair of planters on the ground.
I love this natural plant!!!
After a dead tree falls, cut the tree trunk into smaller pieces.
Hollow it out a little and put some earth in it.
Viola! you will have an instant beautiful planter for your garden!
Other planters can be made from old aprons. Cut the ties from the apron, line it with plastic bags. Viola! it becomes a planter which can be nailed anywhere.
Corrugated plastic cardboard can also be turned into useful planters such as these ones on the left.
We found both of them hanging outside the gift shop at the Evergreen Brickwork, Toronto, Ontario.
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| Every part of this toy plane was from a pop can, Cortland, NY State, USA |
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Do you like working with metals?
Do you love drinking pops?
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| A toy plane made out of pop cans |
If you like drinking pops and have many empty pop cans laying around, you may want to try your hands with them.
How about a beautiful shinning toy plane made out of coca cola pop cans like this one we saw in Cortland, New York State.
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| A Chandelier Made of Old Metal Spoons |
Other metal project you can try is the creative chandeliers we saw in one of the museum gift shops in New York City.
If you have plenty of old metal spoons in your kitchen cupboard, and you are handy, you may be inspired by this shinny very unique chandeliers made 100% out of used spoons. Spectacular and a great conversation piece.
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| A Chandelier Made Out of Old Spoons and Teacups in A NY City Gift Shop. The Chandelier Behind was Made from Spoons. |
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| A wine glass chandelier |
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| Turning old plastic arena chairs into a piece of Maple Leaf wall art - Loblaws Store,Toronto |
Have a collection of old wine glasses?
Turn them into a glassy shiny chandelier!
We saw this one at Hammondsport, NY State.
Here is an extraordinary Canadian Maple Leaf
hanging in the Maple Leaf Garden in Toronto.
Loblaws ( a giant grocery chain store in Canada) bought and renovated the Maple Leaf Hockey Arena and turned it into a huge super market.
Instead of throwing everything to the trash, they used some of the old arena blue plastic chairs and turned them into a huge Maple Leaf decorating one of the walls to the entrance.
As for empty glass bottles, save them and decorate your ceiling with them. The empty glass bottles are perfect to make that old high ceiling shimmering with light.
We saw this bottle ceiling at the Historical Distillery District in Toronto. It was breathtaking!
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| Old wooden chair recycled into a planter |
Old chairs can be turned into a spectacular pieces of art or can be used for some very practical uses.
How about a small plant or desert plant container?
Instead of throwing the old wooden chair to the trash, you can recycle and reuse it as a planter for exotic plants!
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| A key holder made of an old canoe paddle |
Do you have some old wooden or broken paddles laying around in the house?
Do not throw them away. You can t use one as a key holder. It is functional indeed!
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| A store sign made of twigs |
In Algonquin Park, Ontario, we saw a beautiful rustic sign made with twigs hanging outside a canoe rental store.
Instead of spending hundreds sometimes thousand dollars for a large sign for your business, you can simply make one with some branches.
What a creative and eco friendly idea!
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| Huge paper flowers made of old book pages, Manhattan, NY |
We admired these beautiful wall decorations made of pages out of old books and magazines!
These nice eye catching paper flowers were hanging in one of the Gap stores in downtown Manhattan.
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| Pages from old magazines and books can decorate a huge wall easily |
These old pages were folded into cone shapes and stapled together to make pretty decorations. These big paper flowers filled up huge walls in the store.
What a good way to recycle old books! I can't get over how creative people are in making use of otherwise old waste material!
Very inexpensive and original way of decorating a huge wall !
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| A Christmas tree made of old magazine pages |
If you have a lot of old colourful magazines, why not create a table top Christmas tree with them? I saw This Christmas tree at a Toronto downtown cafe. Very easy to make.
Start with a tree base made with wooden towels. Start from the bottom. Fold paper together at the two corners.
Punch a hole at each leaf and stack them up. Each layer of leaves is a little smaller in size than the previous one.
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| Drawing on Corrugated Paper |
If you have corrugated cardboard boxes or paper, don't throw them away. It creates a special 3-D effect when pictures are drawn on it.
At the PEI Farmers Market, we saw these art pieces on recycled corrugated paper, not bad at all!
Or if you have an old bicycle that is beyond repair and is unusable? Do not junk that old bike and put it in the landfill. In Creemore, Ontario, we saw an old bike painted in bright green colour with flower baskets attached to it decorating a sidewalk. Beautiful and very creative!
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| An old bicycle with some old fence decorating a front yard |
Or if you don't feel like painting and doing all the work, just park it and have it lean against some old timber!
We saw one that was used to decorate the front yard of a house.
It looked very rustic and pretty indeed!
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| One of our ash trees died and needed to be cut down |
Recently, one of the old ash trees in our backyard died and we had to remove it.
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| A wooden play area for kids! Tea, anyone? |
Instead of chopping all the wood up and letting someone burn them all up for fuel, we asked our tree cutter to make some outdoor furniture from the tree.
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| A nice rustic area for reading in our backyard! |
We now have two set of beautiful hardwood furniture in our backyard!!!
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| A bench by the door |
If you need a bench for the cottage, there's no need to buy one.
Get a couple of stumps and put them apart at the desired distance. Place a sturdy piece of wood plank on top. You've got a sturdy bench that can seat 4- 5 people easily!
You can get very creative and fancy in the use of recycled tree stumps such as this one we saw at the Discovery Garden in Rochester, USA.
Put a couple of stumps together in your garden; use them as tables or to display your favourite items like your bird houses.
It adds a lot of character to your garden and it will definitely delight the kids and the young at heart!
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| Discovery Garden, Rochester, New York, USA |
Another way to use fallen trees is creating a children playground with the stumps.
There is a company in Canada that does just that.
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| Children's playground made with natural tree stumps, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada |
We saw this children's playground in Kitchener/Waterloo, Ontario.
The huge tree stump has been bolted securely and supported above ground about 1/2 meter. Kids were walking and playing on it, having lots of fun!
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| Central Park, New York |
If there are a few fallen trees in you area, you can pick up some pieces and make yourself a nice wooden fence.
The beauty of this project : the pieces do not have to be straight at all! The bent or curve in the branches will add character to the fence like this one!
Another creative and excellent way to use the branches is using them as support pieces for stair railings.
Again the pieces can have fork pieces which will add to the character of the stairs.
Not feeling ambitious at all? How about a snow man made from just one piece of log?
Paint it white, and black for eyes and buttons. Use your imagination and decorate it a bit.
You will have a cute little sturdy thing standing at your door welcoming visitors to your home!
Another nice recycling project with logs is an angel with a log body, a foam ball head decorated with some ribbon wings displayed at the St. Jacob's Farmers' Market in the Kitchener -Waterloo area.
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| Welcome Sign |
Start by making a wooden welcome sign. Nail the welcome sign to one end of an old spindle. Screw the spindle on a piece of old board; place a flower pot with some greenery or any piece of decoration on it. Done!
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| Toilet Paper Art |
This colourful art piece was displayed at the 2013 Toronto Nuit Blanche all night art event.
It was created from full toilet paper rolls though not from recycled material. I just thought it was neat so I included it here.
Recently, I saw these cute little Christmas reindeer made of white birch logs and branches standing on the front yard and greeting visitors to their homes in the city of Unionville, Ontario.
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| Reindeer made of twigs - nice home Christmas decorations |
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| Candle holders made out of Birch branches |
Their white barks make for many interesting uses.
When the trees get old and need to be cut down, instead of throwing the branches away or burning them, Canadians creatively make many beautiful and useful things out of them.
Reindeer made from birch tree is popular. Another useful item is made by drilling holes in these branches, hollowing them and turning them into candle holders.
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| A log painted white can be used as a stand |
If there is a piece of log you like,
just paint it and use it as a stand for other items around your home.
This log painted white serves as a small stand for a candle nicely.
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| A pine cone basket brings the outdoor inside the home. |
Walking around our neighbourhood, we see lots of pine cones on the ground.
Some people gather them up, place them in a bowl and use them for decorations at home.
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| Pine cone wall decoration |
Or you can tie a few of the pine cones together.
Add some greenery from the garden.
Decorate them with a ribbon.
Viola!
A beautiful wall decoration to welcome the Christmas season.
Some crafty people paint them all different colour, especially white, being a winter colour.
Tie a piece of string and use them for Christmas ornaments on the Christmas tree or simply put in a bowl on a table in their homes.
Another idea: spraying the pine cones in a gold colour and arranging them with some twigs ( also sprayed in gold) in a black colour bowl.
It looked very festive and elegant on a hallway table.
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| Recycle old picture frames into an art piece |
Another project with recycled material is old picture frames.
Find all the old frames in your house and arrange them in a shape that best suit the wall you wish to decorate.
Put a couple pieces of small wood on the back of the picture frames to hold them together. Insert picture and hang. A nice art pieces indeed!
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| An old mirror can be turned into a piece of folk art in San Fransisco |
If you have an old mirror, just paint it over with your favourtie colour or a colour that matches your decor, stencils some flowers on it.
An old tired mirror can be turned into a piece of folk art easily. We saw this beautiful piece hanging in a five star hotel in downtown San Fransisco!
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| An old wooden shutter was recycled and made into an rustic shelf |
In the cottage country, we saw an old window shutter turned into an interesting shelf with the addition of just a plain board painted white and couple of stands.
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| A bird house for the garden |
At the farmers market, we saw a rustic and beautiful garden decoration. It can easily be made by taking a few pieces of old lumber, plus adding a small piece of Birch tree with a drilled hole in it and nail that together which makes a beautiful garden decoration and a bird house too!
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| A solar lamp made with scrape pieces of wood |
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| Turn your old teapot into a show piece! |
Do you have a teapot without lid? Don;t throw it away!
You can recycle the tea pot and turn it into a beautiful flower pot! We saw this teapot at the Eastman House cafe in Rochester, NY
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| Any old cup and saucer can become a vase in you home! |
A similar idea for the old teacup and saucer you can't part with. This pair makes a handy vase for some cut flowers from your garden. What a conversational piece!
Don't know what to do with old bottles at home? Here are some painting design ideas. These eye catching flower vases were used as centre pieces for a special charitable event.
The youths at Markham's Across U-hub made them for their fundraising luncheon. They looked beautiful and graced the tables at the special luncheon. These unique centre pieces cost pennies to make.
Another gorgeous thing made by the same group of youth that I really liked was the Tree of Hope, made from a few hundred used coffee cups.
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| The Tree of Hope |
The trunk of the tree was made by cutting and gluing layers of cups overlapping on top of each other.
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| Trunk was made from Tim Horton's used coffee cups |
The branches were decorated with wind chimes made with used plastic and other coloured used paper cups.
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| Wind chime branches decorated the tree of Hop |
It was a very creative and interesting object and looked very unique, adorning one corner of the stage at the venue.
I was told that many youths collected these used coffee cups over a few months. Together, they recycled them and turned them into this colourful project.
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| An old rust saw can become a canvas for your creativity! |
If there is an old rusty metal saw laying around in your house, use it as your canvas. Paint a picture on it, hang it up to show off your artistic talents!
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| A display at Intrawest Village, Blue Mountains, Ontario |
Ever thought that an old truck is an eyesore in your yard?
Think again!
Recently, we visited the Intrawest Village, a beautiful resort in Blue Mountains, Collingwood and saw this old rusty truck display.
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| An old rusty truck recycled into a rustic beautiful planter - Collingwood |
Instead of junking this useless truck to a junkyard, someone built a fence around it and used it as planters for colourful flowers.
Anything can be recycled into beautiful objects if we allow our creativity and imagination to go wild a little!
Even a beat up old ugly truck could look very artsy and rustic with a few plants added to it!
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| Plants growing out from the trunk and skylight of a car |
Another way an old rusty car can be used is to recycle it and use it as a planter on your neighborhood street!
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| Patch grass growing on the car hood |
You can even get a patch of grass growing on the surface of a car hood like the one we saw in Kensington Market in Toronto. It got a lot of attention from passersby!
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| An old beat up car turned into something green & blended into the Kensington Market neighbourhood, Toronto |
With the right background painted behind this colourful painted car, it did not look too bad at all!
For more ideas to create beautiful things from recycling natural material such as twigs and branches, google the following at:
http://rtam1206.blogspot.ca/2014/08/recycle-twigs-and-small-branches-into.html
If you have any great ideas for using recycling material to make beautiful and useful crafts for kids at camp, I would love to hear from you!
R.T, 2012
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
P.S. Last updated -August, 2015
P.P.S. updated December, 2015
