Amylee’s Creative Way to Recycle

2 Creative Ways to Recycle Plastic Bottles

Today I offer you 2 easy and quick solutions to organise tools in your studio and reduce waste. Horizontal or vertical, you will see that the use of the plastic bottle will make sense by the end of this article.

The materials you will need.

• 6 or more small plastic bottles (with a square shape)
• 7 or more mini metal binder clips
• scissors and a cutter
• thick cardboard, wood or polystyrene thick sheets 

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Note: Small plastic bottles are stiffer than larger ones, so they are less likely to collapse when they are joined together.

Cutting

Using the cutter cut off the top of the bottles. You can use scissors to tidy the cut edge. Repeat for all bottles.

Assembly

Bring the cut bottles together and fix all edges with mini binder clips. It’s important to choose square bottles to make it easier to fix them. Each bottle must be fixed with between 3 or 4 binder clips.

Once the binder clips are in place, remove the 2 handles from each clip.
And voilà, the basic assembly is finished. Now two options are available to us

Idea #1: Vertical bottles

With 1 pack of 6 bottles, you can make a nice tool holder to store brushes or pencils and even paint tubes (especially those that are long and narrow).
The result is just below! (Useful for a corner table or on a shelf).

Idea #2: Horizontal Bottles

Do you have a nice stock of bottles? Then you can make a great display with bottles stored horizontally.
To hold the display, the bottles must be installed in a rigid framework. Between 2 shelves (in a bookcase or in a cupboard) or in a large box, holding all the bottles together. One of the advantages of the box (plastic or cardboard) is it allows you to transport the display if necessary.

Examples : bookcase shelves, cardboard box or plastic box –

I prefer this solution to the first one because I want to get a wider view of my paint tubes and my markers as well. By putting the tubes horizontally, they do not disappear at the bottom of the bottle and the ink does not collect and separate at the bottom of the marker.

Here is the result in my studio:

>Tips: Paint the tube caps to find colours quickly –

Crafty: think about it!

To prevent the weight of the tools from tilting the bottles forward, I recommend adding a row of wedges at the bottom of the display. Wedges can be made from wood, thick folded cardboard or polystyrene (as in the picture below).

They allow everything to be tilted slightly backwards. It has to be firmly embedded between 2 shelves or in the box.

Example with polystyrene wedges

Do not throw away the handles from the binder clips, they can still be reused. Put them in a box in the meantime!

Information for this article was provided by professional fine artist, Amylee Paris. You can visit her colourful portfolio or follow her on Facebook and Instagram. 

Find all Amylee’s posts published in GreatArt online Magazine by clicking here!

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