RECYCLED SODA BOTTLE JEWELRY

These interesting jewelry pieces are made from cut out pieces of soda bottles. In a previous post I made decorative bottle by heat shrinking soda bottles and found that heating small pieces of the bottles from different areas of the bottle produced unique shapes. Also that by painting the inside of the shapes with mixtures of colors added attractive value. The hardware to make the shapes into jewelery can be found at any craft store.

Materials:

Pieces of plastic bottles

Craft paints

Pins, ear ring hooks, and jump rings etc.

Craft glue and supper glue.

Tools:

Scissors, heat gun(high wattage hair dryer will work to some extent, but could damage dryer), gloves, and safety glasses

Steps:

1. Cut out a shape from the bottle, suggest ovals, circles, zig zags, or any shape.

2. Slowly heat the piece with heat gun, you will have to experiment and learn how each piece reacts to the heat. You may also want to paint the pieces before you heat, they twist so much it can be hard to paint later.

3. Paint your new shape only on the inside, I had to use a can of air to blow paint inside some shapes, also you may want to spray the back side of shape with poly to prevent paint from getting scraped off in cases where paint is exposed.

4. You will want to try different sections of bottles, the heavier section at the top and bottom of bottles do not shrink as much and make better pins.

5. Also notice that 2 of the shapes in photo have colored beads inside them, to do this just lay some beads in the center of your cut out shape and heat from side to side until the plastic wraps around them.

6. Add jewelry hardware to your shapes, IE earring hooks, eyelets, jump ring, and maybe a chain.

Basically this fun craft is open to your imagination, it does not work the same as Shrink Plastics from the Craft Store, but similar! Try it and have fun and use care as the pieces get very HOT.