From the subject up there, you may guess that I don’t really know how to describe what Sarah is asking about. Her email should be a bit more informative:

I have a lot of these plastic bubbles that holds those cheap toys that you get out of those quarter machines in the front of grocery stores. My local grocery store give the kids free “HEB bucks” that they then use to collect the plastic bubbles from the skill crane, inside the bubble is a sticker worth a certain amount of points…. ANYWAY, we get TONS of them.

Every once in a while the store will trade a certain amount of bubbles in for those really nifty reusable cloth grocery bags for free.

However I was trying to think of OTHER creative ways to use them as well. I think one good use would be as storage containers for your condiments when bringing your lunch to work or school. Any other ideas?

I love that the shop already has a recycling scheme for them – yay that shop – but they do seem like one of those things that would be great to reuse.

Depending on how water tight they are, I guess you could use them to make snow globes or, conversely, teeny mini-greenhouses.

Other suggestions though?

(Photo of Sarah’s pod collection by the lady herself)

We’ve had an email from Ewan, asking:

hello, any ideas on what i could make with a broken basketball?

it looks exactly like this (–>)

and is completely intact apart from the bit where the pump goes in..

We had an old deflated football in our garden for a while (no idea where it came from) and one of the cats, Carbon, decided it was his own private rainwater collector/bowl — but that was an unintended, temporarily reuse.

So has anyone got any better ideas for Ewan?

(Photo by lusi)

Continuing in our semi-regular series of crafters making cool things by recycling and reusing random stuff, let me introduce Lynsey of SwirlyArts:

I saw over on your blog that you wanted to know what people are making out of old rubbish and stuff that is normally recycled. Well I make lots of things in my Etsy store out of products that are destined for the recycle bin and I thought you might like to check them out. I turn egg boxes into sewing kits, old maps and magazines into envelopes, gift tags, badges and stickers and I make chicken shaped doorstops from second hand fabric.

All very cute – and inspiring – stuff. Browsing through Lynsey’s Flickr profile, I particularly liked the Lego box gift tags (so colourful) and the old books (in her case a children’s German dictionary) into envelopes. I, of course, also love the doorstop chickens – because who couldn’t? ;)

We’ve had an email from Alice who wants to turn this whole crazy thing on its head:

Instead of an item that I want to recycle, I’m actually working backwards here – does anyone know what kind of waste could be used to build a sturdy bookcase?

A few ideas spring to mind from previous posts – namely snowboards (and I guess skateboards would be similar), hollowcore doors – and old hollowed out televisions. There is also a suggestion on making shelves out of old books but I suspect that’s more decorative than sturdy.

If you’re interested in an industrial look, you could use stacked metal food cans (or decorated old paint can) between the shelves – and depending how you do it, they could be used for secret storage too – or skip-diving might turn up some breeze blocks or the like (it might get heavy quickly but red house bricks would look cool).

Any other suggestions?

(Photo by GiniMiniGi)

We’ve had an email from Heather:

I have a former airbed — the pump has failed mechanically and is built in so it can’t be replaced — so I could cut the material away from it if I had an idea what to do with it. the bottom is just pvc sheet, the top is the same but with a fabricy surface.

I suspect some of the suggestions for old inflatables and (from a plastic sheeting point of view) old shower curtains may be relevant – but has anyone got any specific suggestions for Heather?

(UPDATE: Sorry for the downtime this evening – unexpected and unplanned. Grrr, computers suck sometimes.)