What good is a used pickle Bottle?
The obvious answer is “nothing”. And that’s what our answer too was, until a month back when we decided on decorating our new home.
We shopped around a little but did not find something that fit into our scheme of things.
And one evening when we were segregating things that were to be disposed. There was a used pickle jar that had to be disposed. I looked at it as it sat there on the dining table and it suddenly struck my mind.
“Why not make something ourselves?”.
The two of us said that together as if in chorus. Our thoughts matched.
“I was thinking, we could make something out of all these scrap that can be recycled. That way we will not have to roam around finding for that exact thing that is there in my mind. Everything in our home will be as per our taste and would reflect our personalities”.
As Dilip finished speaking, I felt as if he was lip-syncing for me. Because it was the exact same words that crossed my mind.
And there started our adventure.
2 weeks on and we had a bunch of things that we could call out creation. A few were flops, but yet others were a “beauty”.
But it was satisfying. There was that feeling of contentment; our house decorated with our own creations.
In fact, it is surprising that we can make so many things out of what is otherwise a waste. And you will realize that when you see some of the our DIY projects below.
This is the used pickle bottle that gave the idea of this entire DIY thing.
All that we need was a few pebbles that we had bought for our fish tank, a colored jute thread and some teddy faces from old broken hair clips.
And we used an old artificial flower bunch after we had washed it and given it a little touchup.
We had a nice flower vase ready for our TV unit.
This second one was made out of a waste glass that was slightly broken on the edge and a fading old statue of a dancing couple.
We got some red jute thread, a pack of small thermocol balls and the cap of the used pickle bottle. And that was it.
The mouth of the glass was closed with the lid of the pickle bottle. We wound it with a few layers of scotch tape, so that it fitted tightly into the mouth and then used some plastic glue to stick it.
Then we wound the mouth with red jute thread. Inside we dropped a little of the thermocol balls so that it gave a nice look of snow. We wiped and cleaned the resin statue and gave the colors a little touchup. And that’s it.
This found its place on one of the corners in our corner-shelf.
What you are seeing below is an empty plastic bottle for Chyawanprash (it is an ayurvedic food supplement). We have thrown away numerous of these bottles in the past.
But this time round we said, we will make something out of it.
About an hour of work by the 2 of us and our snowman was partially ready. What you are seeing here is the body of the snowman. We have a little more work to do on this one. We weren’t able to find a good thermocol ball for the head, so we decided we will make it using waster paper and Plaster of Paris.
In about a week, we should be able to complete this one.
We used some colored jute threads, some glue and a jute piece to wrap this entire thing. For the head, we will be making a ball out of waste newspaper and wrapping it in plaster of Paris.
After we looked at this incomplete work, we felt we could even use it as a flower vase. The only thing is that we will need a nice and thick bunch of flowers for this one to look good.
The below ones were the most funniest of all. These are 2 shot glasses. The remaining in the set had broken and we were left with only 2.
A few sprinkle of red acrylic color inside and then invert the glasses so that the color flows down. And we had something nice.
Then we picked up a flower bunch that had worn out and was ready to be thrown, and we cut their leaves and gave it a nice shape. Put 5 such leaves into the glass and pressed it in the middle with a pebble.
We then placed in the corners of our TV stand and we get the first appreciation… lol.
Some of our friends thought it was a complicated work, whereas it wasn’t really.
That click from the top will show you the 2 pebbles we placed inside the glasses to hold these leaves in place.
Isn’t that beautiful?
This next one was a little difficult to do and most of it was done by Dilip.
We actually wanted a small table on which we could place our Fish bowl. We had a Betta in it (my daughter calls him, “BLUE”). But we weren’t really able to find something that could go well with the rest of the things in our drawing room.
That’s when we saw a few of these Plywood pieces lying in a corner. These were some of the leftover pieces from the Kitchen work.
These were really of the same sizes, but we were able to find 2 each of the same sizes.
We decided to make a small table out of it.
A few clamps, some screws and about 3 hours of work and we had the table ready for the Fish bowl to be placed.
You can now see how nice the bowl looks on the table and the table matches our drawing room decor too.
This flower vase is made out of an empty honey bottle which we had almost thrown out.
This was in fact our second project. We didn’t really expect this to look too great but this was another one that got us a lot of appreciation.
All that we used in this one was some jute thread, a little glue, some knitted mat pieces and a small teddy face from a broken hair clip and this flower vase as ready.
This flower vase now nicely adorns our Inverter table. Actually that corner was a little dull looking, so we placed this bright colored flowers in the flower vase and it has lit up the corner.
There are a few more projects including a waterfall that we made. We will show that in another post because it is an interesting one to discuss.
It was an amazing experience making all of these and we feel that these might also be an inspiration to a few of you who are looking at making some DIY things for themselves.
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