Another great use for your old soda bottles is to cut ’em up, color ’em, and heat them into these pretty and colorful beads! What a chic way to celebrate Earth Day! These would be a fun project to make at a crafty get-together with your girlfriends. After the beads are made, have fun making them into funky jewelry. Project via Cut Out & Keep. (Photo by Threadbanger)
Project Estimate:
Heather Mann is chief editor of Dollar Store Crafts, and specializes in transforming inexpensive materials into stylish and simple craft projects. She has appeared on the Martha Stewart Show, in Reader’s Digest and the New York Times. DSC has been recognized as named one of Babble.com’s Top 10 Best Overall Craft Blogs (2011 & 2012) and Apartment Therapy’s 10 Crafty Blogs We Love (2010). Her work has been viewed by millions on the cover of FamilyFun magazine and on top websites such as RealSimple, Huffington Post, ABCNews.com, and others.
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Wait, just how exactly is producing toxic fumes the perfect way to celebrate Earth Day? I’m all for creative reuse, but I’m missing something here…
michelle
great idea! kinda like shrinky dinks, only way cheaper. the amount of gases given off at the temperature needed to soften the plastic shouldn’t be a problem if you ventilate. after all, it doesn’t take an incinerator to do this craft (I’m against incinerating plastics).
Hi, We tried it and it was so cool, plus alot of fun. Thanks for showing us what to do!
Songbird
Okay, this project is awesome, thanks! My fourth grader has a class project where they all have to come up with a product and “sell” it in class, and we are making these – he’s cutting and coloring, and I’m doing the melting. Definitely takes some practice to get them to melt in evenly without burning.
One cool thing I’d like to add…we mixed it up using some pre-colored bottles as well, like green Mountain Dew bottles and brown root beer bottles…they turn out really beautifully!
Person
Can you heat them in the oven? I dont have a blowtorch handy!
heather
Try it and let us know. Embossing tools (also called heat guns here) are about $20 at your craft store. You can use a 40% coupon (always available in Michael’s and JoAnn’s circulars) to get a deal on it if it’s the kind of thing you might use for more than one project. Or maybe you can try using your hair dryer.
Demonna
Just letting you know that the link leads to a 404 error page.
Melting plastic soda bottles releases Dioxin, which causes cancer.
please don’t do it.
Jody
you could proobably do them in a crock pot–more controlled, you get to watch them shrink up, and no risk of igniting yourself or other stuff, hee hee. but you can do shrinky dinks in the crock pot so i am assuming you could do this too–fun for doing it with kids w/o fear of major burns
Apparently it is somewhat difficult to work the melted plastic properly though. If it is not cooled quickly, it tends to crystallize, making it brittle. And if it is overheated, it may decompose and discolor. Perhaps not worth the trouble for beads.
15 Comments
Vone
Love it – great link.
Fran
Wait, just how exactly is producing toxic fumes the perfect way to celebrate Earth Day? I’m all for creative reuse, but I’m missing something here…
michelle
great idea! kinda like shrinky dinks, only way cheaper. the amount of gases given off at the temperature needed to soften the plastic shouldn’t be a problem if you ventilate. after all, it doesn’t take an incinerator to do this craft (I’m against incinerating plastics).
Crafty Beader
hey cool idea! I want to give this one a try
Tammy Burton
Hi, We tried it and it was so cool, plus alot of fun. Thanks for showing us what to do!
Songbird
Okay, this project is awesome, thanks! My fourth grader has a class project where they all have to come up with a product and “sell” it in class, and we are making these – he’s cutting and coloring, and I’m doing the melting. Definitely takes some practice to get them to melt in evenly without burning.
One cool thing I’d like to add…we mixed it up using some pre-colored bottles as well, like green Mountain Dew bottles and brown root beer bottles…they turn out really beautifully!
Person
Can you heat them in the oven? I dont have a blowtorch handy!
heather
Try it and let us know. Embossing tools (also called heat guns here) are about $20 at your craft store. You can use a 40% coupon (always available in Michael’s and JoAnn’s circulars) to get a deal on it if it’s the kind of thing you might use for more than one project. Or maybe you can try using your hair dryer.
Demonna
Just letting you know that the link leads to a 404 error page.
African Beads
Really very creative work. Will really try it out in my leisure time. Looking forward for more good posts from your side.
Thanks
Kulsum
Awesome..! x
Kate
Melting plastic soda bottles releases Dioxin, which causes cancer.
please don’t do it.
Jody
you could proobably do them in a crock pot–more controlled, you get to watch them shrink up, and no risk of igniting yourself or other stuff, hee hee. but you can do shrinky dinks in the crock pot so i am assuming you could do this too–fun for doing it with kids w/o fear of major burns
winnie the pooh
i tried it and i love it
great idea
Howard
Kate is wrong. The harmful dioxins she is worried about all contain chlorine, but soda bottles are made from PET (poly ethylene terephthalate) which contains only carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dioxin for details on dioxins and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly%28ethylene_terephthalate%29 for details on PET.
Apparently it is somewhat difficult to work the melted plastic properly though. If it is not cooled quickly, it tends to crystallize, making it brittle. And if it is overheated, it may decompose and discolor. Perhaps not worth the trouble for beads.