• With Halloween approaching, check out this fab tutorial on making mini skull lanterns out of little plastic bottles – she says “milk bottles” but from a British POV, they look more like little yoghurt drink bottles. Either way though, ace!
• SueAnn on Lil Bird Told Me has posted a great idea to make old carrier bags easier & neater to storage/carry around – fold them into triangles. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this since I do it obsessively with every crisp packet I see!
• Have gloves magically disappeared from your winter warmer collection over the summer? If so, you could use the remaining odd ones to make a cute animal plushie toy! Dinner for Mousci has a how-to.
• I love these chunky beads made from old cereal boxes – very fun!
• Finally, in case you didn’t see it, friend of Recycle This Petra made a clothes peg airer thing out of “some electricity pipe, an old iron coat hanger, some rope and pegs” – I want to make my own too now!

(Photo by Care for DollarStoreCrafts)

When we were talking about making jewellery from drinks cans a couple of months ago, Mary Anne Enriquez sent me links to some relevant Flickr groups which then got buried in my inbox – sorry for that Mary Anne!

Anyway, Mary Anne thought Recycle This readers may be interested in the following Flickr groups:

• PET Bottle and other Plastics Recycled Creativity – jewellery and other knick-knacks made from old plastic bottles
• Fan>TAB>ulous Aluminum & Tin Can ART – art and accessories made from, or incorporating, drinks cans or can tabs.
• Cardboard Tubes ReCrafted – all sorts of ornaments and other things made from assorted cardboard tubes – from toilet roll tubes to giant sturdy ones.

Lots of wonderfully creative work – inspiring stuff.

Thanks so much for the links, Mary Anne and sorry again that it’s taken me so long to post them!

(Roses photo by rosely pignataro; cardboard cutout photo by giulia massera)

Lucia, of the weather balloons from last week, is another one of those fab people who makes cool things by recycling random stuff.

You can see examples of her creations at http://www.jblarts.com but I thought I’d also feature a few of my favourite things here – namely the egg box fairy light shades (above) and the old electronics as earrings below. I also think what she’s dubbed a “tattoo bracelet” is also very cool – a shaped strip of an old plastic bottle with a pretty design on it – a simple but great idea, with loads of possible variations.