tutorial | The Ginger Penny Pincher

Recently I brought you a Pinterest love-fest of Fused Plastic Projects. Here a few highlights:

(Click on images to link back to the original source website)

Source: Betz White

Source: About.com

Source: Emily Grace

Yeah, there are some crazy creative people out there. With sewing skills. (Which I lack.)

Anyways... inspired by the inventiveness of fused plastic and my own desire to do it myself, I did a little research. Turns out, it’s super easy to make! Best of all, it’s super cheap (darn close to free), it’s a quick process, and it’s upcycling a resource that’s often fated to a landfill: plastic bags.

I’m sure a lot of you go the reuseable-bag route (I try to remember them, but I actually use the grocery bags as trash can liners, so I sometimes end up with a few extra ones, i.e., craft supplies!). However, even if you opt out of the grocery bags, you probably still encounter other kinds of plastic bags from time to time (think of packaging for a loaf of bread, especially those retro-fabulous Wonder Bread bags).

For this particular project, I used black bodega bags. These are especially fun because they have gold and silver metallic striping on one side, which I used to cut out a C and J (for Courtney and Josh… not K-Ci and Jo Jo… but good guess).

Then I took about 4 bags and cut off the handles and the bottom:

With the handles and bottom cut off, the bag can have a larger surface area to work with. Open up bag, unfolding the sides, and lay flat.

See the difference in workable surface area?

After four bags are cut, opened, and layered, you should have a stack that is 8-ply (4 X 2 = 8). I wouldn’t recommend anything thinner, otherwise you’ll end up with holes and the final material will not have as much structural integrity (yeah, that’s right: structural integrity).

And I tried a mere 6-ply, by the way: lots of holes…

Yeah, that’s no fun.

Then I placed the layered bags (with the cut out C and J on top) in between two layers of parchment paper, then placed this parchment-plastic “sandwich” on an ironing board.

Sold in most grocery stores...

In a well-ventilated area, e.g., the fire escape, I ironed on high until plastic was fused. Don’t let the brevity of that statement mislead you into thinking that this is a fast, fool-proof process. It does take a little time, a little patience, and a lot of ironing. You iron directly onto the parchment, making sure to never let the hot iron touch the actual plastic (or you’ll have gelatinous plastic goo… which is nearly impossible to clean up).

Iron all over the paper, never keeping the iron in one place for too long (this is how you get holes). Occasionally peel back paper to see the plastic’s progress. Remember, bubbly is bad:

Fused plastic with a lot of air bubbles will not be as durable, so if this is how your plastic is looking, replace the parchment and continue ironing. The ideal texture should be something like raw silk or crepe.

After you’ve achieved the necessary texture, remove from parchment and allow to cool. Then, you can cut it, sew it, glue it, love it, whatever your crafty heart desires! As showcased in my Pinterest finds, this material can absolutely go through a sewing machine, and can be treated just like any kind of vinyl or thick crepe.

All “that’s what she said” jokes aside, see how thick and hard it is? (I know, I know…)

And here are both of the finished products:

See? This method doesn’t alter text or melt the ink, so bags with fun logos or messages can definitely be used for this project.

As you can see, I haven’t quite figured out what to do with this material yet (nor have I come up with a plan for the other 5 zillion plastic bags I’ve saved over the past few months, including ones with Target bullseyes, Wonder Bread logos, smiley faces, trees, kitschy phrases and… the list goes on).

Maybe I should take a sewing class…

…or two.

So, in summary:

How about you fine folks? Have you recently tried your hand at an upcycling project? Or a sewing project? Or both?! Share below in comment form, or e-mail me: thegingerpennypincher@gmail.com.

Other upcycling ideas…

Yardsticks and Rulers

Paint Chips

So, I said I wouldn’t return to the regularly scheduled blogging for another two weeks (holidays are hard!), but I did want to do a little show-and-tell with some of the gifts I gave this year, particularly the handmade ones.

Oooohhhh………..

As you may remember, Josh and I made the (ambitious) commitment to making all of our Christmas gifts for family by hand. We knew this would help us save money and create truly personalized gifts, but we also wanted to see if we were up to challenge! You have already seen some of the gifts (via previous blog post), but I’m going to show them again anyway. Because I can.

Here we go:

For my mother, I took a song that reminds us of each other (“You Are My Sunshine”), printed it out (it turned out to be three pages) and framed it in three black Ikea frames. And then I proceeded to wrap it up, ship it off, and not take a darn picture.

(Insert tear-jerking picture here)

Oh well…

For my mother-in-law, I gave the beloved linen spray:

You remember that stuff I made here? I gave it to her as a Christmas gift (along with a host of other bath/good smelling/candles-girly things). I think this stuff is fun for any occasion, and definitely a great alternative to Febreze… or other sprays with ingredients that are more than five syllables long.

For my orange-wearin’, University of Tennessee supporting father, I gave him the string nail art of the state of Tennessee (check out the tutorial here).

After the warm fuzzies of successfully completing a crafty venture set in, I decided to do the same for my Georgia-born brother-in-law, this time making Atlanta the heart and point from which all of the strings “radiated.” Not the winning-est pics, but that’s because I only remembered at the last minute that I should snap a few before giving it away.

Instead of buying a $10 pre-cut piece of wood from Michael’s like the last time, I decided to go with a wooden cutting board from the local dollar store (it wasn’t Dollar Tree, so the board was actually $3.99). Then I sprayed it with a wood stain and painted the sides lime green (my fave detail).

The wooden cutting board came with its own hanger, and I let it remain, in hopes that my “utilitarian” brother-in-law will hang it on the walls of his spartan apartment (fingers crossed).

For my brother, we made a set of Scrabble magnets (heart-warming story found here… well, mildly heart-warming).

For Josh’s dad (my father-in-law), we decided to take advantage of a slightly long-term endeavor of mine. Being a big fan of beer and an even bigger fan of preserving our planet, I have held onto to nearly all bottle caps whose removal I have been responsible for over the last year. Other members of my family have been helpful in this endeavor as well (I didn’t really have to twist their arms). At the time, I didn’t have a clear plan for said bottle caps, but I knew I would figure something out (I even have a Pinterest board devoted exclusively to this interest: check it out).

Well, I gave it the ol’ college try, and I came up with a fun art project:

I took a Ben Franklin quote (since then, I have learned that he may have not actually said this quote, but whatever), printed it off on regular printer paper, made a matte of hot-glue-gunned beer caps and stuck it in a shadow box (thanks again, Ikea).

In keeping with the beer cap theme, I decided to make some beer cap magnets for my sister-in-law’s boyfriend (who also came to visit us in NYC). Then I liked them so much, I almost kept them… but Josh said no. ”Oooookkaaaayyy, Jooosh…”

I took the beer caps and attached a small magnet with hot glue, but not before I added a spacer to fill the cavity of the beer cap. And what did I make the spacer out of??? Champagne corks! Turns out that a champagne cork fits perfectly inside a bottle cap, so after I glue the cork to the bottom of the cap, I used a serrated knife (and took my time) and sawed of the remaining part (and you’ll bet I used the rest for the other bottle caps).

See?

Two upcycling efforts in one!

For my sister-in-law’s gift, I re-used the same method from the previous post about tile coasters, but this time I used images from her favorite movie of all time, Nightmare Before Christmas (when asked whether she considers it more of a Christmas movie or a Halloween movie, she enthusiastically replies “It’s an ANYTIME movie!”).