Spring Archives | Page 3 of 3

Creative Challenge #5: Plastic Bottles

Make something with Plastic Bottles

In honor of Earth Day, I’d like to raise a little awareness toward the enormous amounts of plastic bottles used around the world, coupled with some thoughts on recycling and upcycling those bottles into creative products. My family is hooked on bubbly water, and while the number of bottles we go through each week is staggering, each of these bottles gets recycled…and occasionally upcycled into art (our Recycled Sculpture project can be found here).

Sobering Statistics

Two million plastic bottles are used in the U.S. every five minutes!
Almost every hour nearly 250,000 plastic bottles are dumped
The average time taken by plastic bottles to decompose in a landfill is close to 700 years.
Producing new plastic products from recycled materials uses two-thirds less energy than is required to make products from raw (virgin) materials. It also reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

The Challenge

Make something with plastic bottles! Have you cut the tops off to use them as funnels, added them to a marble run, used them as sand scoopers, or turned them into something surprising? The project should be executed by children, but adults are welcome to facilitate or collaborate if the mood strikes!

To join in

Use plastic bottles, along with any other materials of your choice.
Attach a link to your blog post, a YouTube video, or photo of the experiment along with a description of what you and/or your child/ren did in the comment section below.
There is no deadline for this project.

Inspiration

I’m in love with these beaded bottle curtains from the Seoul Olympics!
Cut bottles up and turn them into flowers like these Garbage Flowers from Aunt Peaches or these Sun Catchers from The Chocolate Muffin Tree.
Save a bunch of bottles and make an orb or hanging lamp like these by Ilona Staples

Instructions for adding an image file

Click on the “Choose File” button (below the “Submit” button)
Choose a JPEG file from your computer
Type in a description of your experiment into the comment text box
Click the “Submit Comment” button
Grab the Creative Challenge button and add it to your site, or copy this text into your HTML.

For more Creative Challenges, click here.

How are you celebrating Earth Day?

Egg Dyeing Experiments

By Rachelle 8 Comments

News break If you like TinkerLab, please click on over here and give us your vote.

We won’t win anything, but the attention sure is nice!

+++++

I’m excited to share my first inter-blog collaborative project. Are you ready?

Today I’m posting two Easter Egg projects in conjunction with Melissa of The Chocolate Muffin Tree.

After reading about last week’s Rolled Easter Egg Painting, Melissa suggested that we could have gotten extra mileage out of the project if we’d made it a two for one kind of thing. In case you missed it, N and I made paintings by rolling painted plastic Easter eggs all over pieces of paper. When the paintings were done I washed the eggs off, and Melissa’s idea is that we could have kept the eggs painted as decorative treasures. Of course! I loved this idea, so Melissa and I hatched a plan for today’s post: We would simultaneously experimented with Rolled Easter Egg Painting and we’d also share an idea for Naturally Dyed Easter Eggs. You can read my posts right here on TinkerLab, and Melissa’s are over here on her blog, The Chocolate Muffin Tree.

Dyed Egg Experiment #1: We made Rolled Wooden Eggs with wooden eggs, acrylic paint, and glitter. Click here for details.

Dyed Egg Experiment #2: We made Vegetable-dyed Easter Eggs from beets, cabbage, and onions, and used stickers, parsley, and rubber bands to add texture. Click here for more.

While Melissa and I worked with similar materials, our perspectives and those of our children are different, and we hope you’ll enjoy seeing how these experiments transpired in each of our homes.

If you’d like to join the collaboration and share your version of either egg-coloring process (or something entirely different!), you’re welcome to share a photo or link in the comments.

Rolled Wooden Eggs

By Rachelle 7 Comments

This is part of a collaboration with my friend Melissa’s blog, The Chocolate Muffin Tree. Scroll to the bottom for a link to her Two for One: Rolled Eggs. Her colors are amazing!

We started with some wooden eggs. Aren’t they pretty?

What we used

Wooden Eggs
Acrylic Paint. Acrylics will stain clothes, walls, etc. Be sure to cover anything you wouldn’t want permanently painted!
Foil-lined bowl for the paint
Glitter
Container for rolling eggs in
Paper cut to fit in container
Tongs

N dipped the eggs in some paint, placed them in the container, and then rolled them around. She thinks glitter is almost as exciting as lollipops, and glitter was added liberally!

After rolling the eggs around, the papers took on a life of their own. N used A LOT of paint, which gave the paintings a rich, thick appearance.

And because we used wooden eggs, rather than the plastic ones we used last week, we now have some treasures to pull out and enjoy year after year.

If you’d like to see the other side of the wooden egg collaboration, visit Melissa at The Chocolate Muffin Tree to read about how she and her daughter painted their own wooden eggs.

Rolled Easter Egg Painting

By Rachelle 27 Comments

When my daughter was about 2 1/2, her very favorite art activity was rolling paint-coated marbles all over sheets of paper. We made Rolling Rock Paintings with smooth rocks and Spooky Marble Spider Webs for Halloween. With Easter coming up, I was inspired to make something fun with the plastic eggs that consume dollar stores across the country. Not only is this fun to do, but the set up is easy and it’s a novel way to celebrate the spring season. On the developmental/arts experience level, kids will make choices about the colors they use, they will be active (standing and moving!), and they’ll learn how to manipulate the uneven balance of a rolling egg (as opposed to a more predictable rolling marble).

Materials

Easter eggs. I used plastic, but just about any eggs will do. If you can pry the chocolate ones away from your kids, more power to you!
Paint. Tempera or biocolors. Washable is always preferable!
Paper
Tray to hold the paper. We used a wooden tray, but I’ve also had great success with an open cardboard box.