So this weekend I decided to try and reuse some of my plastic waste by upcycling into dinky little charms. I read a great article just before Christmas about taking plastic, drawing on it, cutting it out and using a gentle heat in the oven to turn it into little charms. I had pictures of making something cute to hang in my window, or maybe a keyring. I had also been given a massive pack of Sharpies at Christmas, so it seemed like time to get creative.
As luck would have it, someone brought in some muffins last week and left them in our kitchen (at work, not home – but having a magic muffin-bringing pixie in our kitchen at home would be astonishingly good) so I pilfered the packaging and took it home. I washed them both out carefully, and added a plastic ‘basket’ that had had grapes in for good measure. I then printed out images to trace onto my plastic and filled the kitchen with Sharpies, masking tape, bits of cut-out plastic, scissors, cutting board and craft knife, and got down and crafty!
This was the result. Yes, curly bits of junk.
OK, so it didn’t work out quite as I planned! The reason why, as a swift bit of googling revealed, was that I was using the wrong sort of plastic. I’d always seen those little triangles with the numbers in but hadn’t really considered what they meant, other than ‘this can be recycled’. So I was using type 1, and I needed type 6… have a look at this wonderful infographic from MS Plastics to find out more!
You live and learn.
Now then – has anyone got any Type 6 I can scrounge?
