What can I do with old felt tips and lids?

lindos90

Ive been sorting through my kids box of felt tips today, and have lots of dried up pens and odd lids. They are well beyond a drop of water to revive them! Im not sure which kind of plastic they are, so unable to put in the recycling.

Does anyone have any interesting and fun things we can make with them instead of just putting them in the bin?

The only thing I can think of is drilling a hole in the end of the lids and threading them together to make a necklace? Could they be melted to make a decoration? (I remember when I was at school there was a craze for putting crisp wrappers in a warm oven, they would shrink and we made badges with them!)

Any suggestions gratefully received!

lindos90

The thread has fell off the front page now, but just as a followup in case someone else googles and gets here, I found a couple of things..

(we considered safety re small parts with small kids and pets etc first)

We made holes in the ends of the felt tip lids/tops and made a chunky necklace by threading them onto wool, we thought they could also be hung from trees as mobiles but didnt get that far!

Another site made smaller 'beads' by cutting/sawing the main barrels of the felt tips too.

Found an 'upcycling' web site where they used plastic toy soldiers to make a bowl (a bit similar to the old LP bowl method)

http://www.deepfriedkudzu.com/2007/10/monkey-bowl.html


Im assuming I could use pen lids instead, it would look very colourful!

I've also got my eye on some old plastic pegs too!..nothing is safe now!


The website recommended doing this on an outside grill due to the possibility of toxic fumes:eek: so I'll be very careful!

fuzzypicklehead

Watching this one with interest, as I run a local upcycling project and am always looking for fresh ideas. When I was in Uni, we used the insides of dried out felt tips to put inside quirky glass bottles of water to make a really cool sun-catching window feature. I'm thinking you could also use them to dip-dye small pieces of fabric or maybe canvas bags.

I like your idea of using the outsides to make beads. If you're able to cut them consistently they would be great to weave into bead bracelets. With a slit in one end, they could hold plant labels in the garden, or they could be woven/glued around things like picture frames, boxes or bins to make colourful new items.