Plastic Recycling Art

Plastic Bags

• Use plastic bags to create art instead of taking them to the bag recycling box at the grocery store. Clear plastic bags, colored plastic page markers and thin craft paper, scissors and a dry iron are all the tools and materials you need. In place of colored page markers, use grated crayons to add color. Place the colored page markers, or pressed leaves and flowers, or any flat, decorative item you'd like, inside a plastic bag laid flat between two sheets of craft paper. Use a hot iron to press the items for a minute or so, until they fuse into a flat sheet to frame, cut and hang as sun catchers or mount on magnets. Fused plastic bag art projects provide almost endless opportunities for creativity and recycling.

Bread Bag Clips

• Hard plastic bread bag clips are colorful raw material for recycled plastic art. Make jewelry, desktop sculpture or decorative toppers for refrigerator magnets by laying tags out on parchment paper on old cookie sheets, in piles or creative forms, and melt them on a grill or over hot coals outside. Once the tags are melted into the forms you want, affix them to pin backs or earring posts for jewelry. Mount them in shadow boxes for 3-D art, or affix them to wire or string for hanging mobile art.

Plastic Bottles and Jugs

• Plastic bottles and jugs come in a variety of colors and thicknesses and are perfect materials to cut up and re-purpose for art. Cut out shapes for mobiles, collages, 3-D art, jewelry and sculpture. Use clear plastic bottles strung on plastic rope for a garden wind sculpture. Cut the tops off soda bottles at the shoulders for funnel-like shapes to string on flexible wire for plastic, bendable sculptures. Make whimsical birdhouses from colored laundry and juice jugs, affixing parts with paper fasteners or grommet systems. Cut fantasy art flowers from different colors of plastic bottles, using caps as the centers or the flower necks. String plastic bottle caps together after punching holes in the sides with an awl to form unusual belts.

Garden Art

• Use plastic to create garden art for your yard or landscape. Cut plastic into small garden tabs with vegetable shapes at the top for weather-proof, artful garden row markers. Cut out large letters from plastic foam meat trays, and make a funny garden sign to mount on a stake, and post in the yard. Use a collection of large laundry and juice jugs to assemble a garden fountain by stacking jugs on stakes around a solar garden fountain for an unusual display.