Recycle Crafts

Coffee Filter butterflies

These beautifully vibrant butterflies are a great way to welcome spring! 

Suspend them from the ceiling with fishing line, or make several and attach to a paper plate mobile.

What you’ll need:

Pipe Cleaners

Paper coffee filters

Water color paints

Paint brush

Water

Glue or paste

Clear tape

Steps:

Flatten the coffee filter and place it on a plate or newspaper, the paint and water will soak through. Set aside on paper towels to dry.

Fold a pipe cleaner in half. Use only half.

Fold the coffee filter accordion style, in about ½” pleats.

Position the pleated coffee filter into the bent end of the chenille stem. Center the filter at the bend.

Twist the chenille stem around the filter to secure it in place.

Bend the tips of the chenille stems over about ¼” to create the antennae.

Fan out the butterfly wings.

If desired, hang with yarn or fishing line.

Egg Carton Buggy Mobile

What you’ll need:

18 place egg carton

Scraps of colorful patterned papers (wallpaper samples, old greeting cards) or construction paper

Acrylic paints: red, orange, brown, light blue, green, purple, yellow, white and pink

Scissors

2 black skinny chenille stems

9 flat-backed heavy pebbles, marbles, or other object

White yarn

2 heavy twigs or craft dowels

9 medium black pom poms

18 small wiggle eyes

White craft glue

Paintbrush

Hot glue gun

Cut up the egg carton,Cut the egg carton sections apart. Trim around the sections so that all you have left are colored cups. Cut leaf-shaped wings from the paper.

Separate the colored egg cups so that you have two groups of nine cups, one of each color.

Turn one group of colored cups over, set the other group aside.

Squeeze some white glue into each of the cups that are turned upward. Place a flat-backed marble into each cup and allow time for the glue to dry. This will give each bug enough weight that they will hang nicely on your mobile and will cut down on the lines tangling together. It will also help the bugs to “look” downward so that they are seen from the ground.

Cut 9 pieces of yarn about 18” long each.

Onto each of the egg cup halves with the marble in them, glue a black pom pom to the closed (bottom) end. Now pair up your colored egg cups.

To assemble each bug body you will need a pair of the same colored egg cups, a set of paper wings, an 18” piece of yarn and your hot glue gun. Pipe a layer of hot glue onto the outer open edge of the egg cup with the marble in it, place the wings onto the glue, the yarn in the middle of the open cup at the top, and then the other egg cup goes on last. Repeat these steps for each bug.Now that the bodies are assembled you can glue the wiggle eyes onto the black pom poms.

Spidey eggcarton

Because these creepy critters don’t take long to hatch, you can turn them out by the dozen.

Materials

Empty egg carton

Black paint

Black pipe cleaners

Googly eyes

Glue

Push pin or paper clip

Instructions

Cut the cups off an empty egg carton and place them on newspaper. Paint the cups, inside and out, with a coat of black acrylic paint.

Use the end of a paper clip or a pushpin to poke four holes along the bottom edge on one side of the cup. Poke matching holes on the opposite side of the cup.

To make fuzzy legs, cut four black pipe cleaners into 7-inch lengths. Thread a pipe cleaner through one of the holes, into the cup, and out the corresponding hole on the other side. Make sure the ends protrude an equal length from both sides of the cup and bend them upward at the base of the spider’s body. Fold in the opposite direction midway down the legs to create knees and bend the tips to make feet.

Finally, glue on googly eyes.

Image via Wikipedia