Uses for Plastic Food Containers
Despite your efforts to help green up the planet, you still come home from the market with armloads of plastic. Plastic water bottles, margarine tubs, yogurt containers and clamshells litter your recycling bins. You'd love to re-use some of these containers, but you don't need more food storage. Rest assured, you can do many other things with all of that plastic. Does this Spark an idea?
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Shrink Art
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If you were a child during the 1980s you must remember the Shrinky Dink phenomenon. Color a big piece of plastic, cut it out and stick it in the oven and voila -- cute chunky character! Relive those days with a piece of #6 plastic (often used in takeout clamshells). Cut out a large flat piece of the plastic, scuff up one side using sandpaper, then either draw freehand or trace a design onto the scuffed side using colored pencils. Cut to the desired shape or add holes for hanging as desired. Preheat your oven or toaster oven to 325 F, then place the plastic pieces on a cookie sheet and put them in the oven. Shrinking takes from 1 minute to 1 minute 30 seconds -- watch your plastic carefully for best results!
Knitting Project To-Go
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Knitting enthusiasts know that it's crucial to be able to take your project along with you so you can take advantage of that extra time in the doctor's office or on the train. But how to keep your yarn clean and untwisted? It's easy to make a knitting to-go container. Take your favorite appropriately-sized food container, well-scrubbed in very hot water, and punch a hole through the lid using an awl or x-acto knife. If you want your hole to be smooth and uniform, insert a metal grommet with eyelets and back it with a piece of rubber tubing. Warm the tubing and strain it over the eyelets. When it cools, the rubber will keep your yarn from snagging. Now, just load up the container with your yarn, feed a strand through the lid, affix the lid and you are ready to roll.
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Puppet Madness
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Your preschooler insists on those tiny little yogurts every single day -- you must have an army of the things. Go ahead and use them to construct your own army...of animal puppets! Beginning with clean dry cups, wrap pieces of felt to fit around each yogurt cup, then cut the felt to fit and glue it on using tacky glue or a hot glue gun. Select and cut appropriate features for your animal in different colors of felt (ears, mouths, spots, whiskers, etc.) and glue them on as well. Feel free to go with googly eyes for a cute look, and affix any other accessories you desire using glue. Let them dry and it's showtime.
Get Weighty
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Put the finishing touches to your in-home gym by constructing some dumbbells out of old plastic water, soda or juice bottles. Simply fill the clean bottles with either water (filling a liter bottle with sand will make a 2.2 pound weight) or sand (filling that same liter bottle with sand will produce a 2.6 pound weight), screw the cap on very tightly, and you're ready to work out.
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