Recycled Craft Project Ideas for Earth Day and Every Day
By Amy Solovay
New craft supplies aren’t always the best craft supplies. Instead of shopping for your craft supplies, why not try reclaiming, recycling, “upcycling” and re-purposing older materials to use instead? Here are some ideas for easy recycled crafts (also sometimes called “upcycled crafts”) you can make at home. Some of these ideas are child friendly, and some of them are ones that adults are likely to enjoy the best success with.
These are all fantastic Earth Day craft ideas, but you don’t need to wait for Earth Day to do any of them. They’re also fantastic everyday craft ideas you can use for saving money and making responsible use of the planet’s resources — which is win-win for everyone.
Recycle Stained T-Shirts With Tie Dye
You Can Cover Up the Stains on a Worn White T-Shirt by Tie Dyeing Wavy Stripes to Cover Up the Stains.
Do you, or any of the kids in your family, have t-shirts that are too stained to wear any more? If so, don’t throw the t-shirts in the trash; give them new life by tie-dying them. The following tie-dye articles will help:
- How to recycle a stained t-shirt with tie dye
- How to tie dye a spiral or swirl
- How to tie dye a heart shape
- How to tie dye a striped t-shirt
- Suggestions for avoiding ugly tie dyes
Make Rag Rugs, Rag Bags, Rag Jewelry and Other Fabric Crochet Projects
If you have clothes you’d like to upcycle, you could reclaim the fabrics and transform them into rag balls to use in fabric crochet. Pictured here are some fabric crochet project ideas. There are free patterns available for all the projects you see pictured here.
You can cut old curtains, sheets or clothes into fabric strips to use for all kinds of projects ranging from jewelry to trivets to tote bags to rag rugs. Check out this page about fabric crochet projects to find free patterns for making all the projects pictured above, plus others.
Bottle Cap Crafts
Crochet Snowflake Trivet: Free Pattern and Step-By-Step Craft Tutorial
If you have any soda drinkers or beer drinkers in your family, you might be wondering what you can make with bottle caps. There are lots of possibilities. Check out this list of bottle cap crafts for ideas. Pictured above is an easy, beginner-friendly snowflake trivet you can make using metal bottle caps. The basic idea: You make little crocheted pockets for the bottle caps and stick them inside, and then you stitch multiple pockets together to make a trivet that you can use for protecting your table tops or countertops from hot dishes. If you want more detailed, step-by-step instructions for doing this, check out the FREE snowflake crochet trivet pattern HERE.
Recycle Broken Objects With Mosaic
Floral Mosaic Tiles Hand Cut From Vintage Homer Laughlin Plates
If you’d like to try making mosaics, you could buy expensive mosaic tiles that are designed just for that purpose. On the other hand, you could clean out your cupboards and put any chipped or cracked china to good use instead. Click here for instructions on how to cut mosaic tiles out of old dishes and plates. I’ve used these techniques to keep hundreds of broken dishes out of the landfill.
Broken china isn’t the only acceptable material for use in mosaic art. You can also use broken jewelry, small toys, beach glass, pebbles, shells, and other stuff. You can learn more in my guide to mosaic art, HERE, and my guide to mosaic supplies, HERE.
Make Handmade Paper Out of Junk Mail
This Collage Art Features Handmade Paper, Spin Art, and Cubes of Resin With Tiny Silk Flowers Embedded Inside Them
Everybody accumulates junk mail. It’s easy to toss it all in the trash, but that isn’t an environmentally-friendly solution. Even better: recycle it! You can recycle many different papers into gorgeous handmade paper.
Handmade papers are useful in many different types of paper crafts, including collage, mixed media art, card making, printmaking, altered art, altered book making, and scrapbooking. Click here for instructions on how to make handmade paper.
Knit and Crochet With Plastic Bags or Other Found Materials
Free Pouch Pattern: An Easy Project for Starting to Crochet Plastic Bags
Yarn and crochet thread are fun materials to work with, but they aren’t your only options for making lovely knitting and crochet projects. You can upcycle many different types of materials for use in knitting and crocheting. For example, you can use plastic mesh produce bags to make dish scrubbies.
Many knitters and crocheters cut up plastic bags to work with. One popular buzzword these days is “plarn.” You can click here for more information about how to make and use plarn. See Also: Crochet Plastic Bags.
Upcycled Napkin Rings Made From Pull Tabs
Upcycled Crochet Napkin Rings: Free Crochet Pattern
If you have pull tabs left over from canned sodas, canned pet food or canned anything, you can use them to make these intriguing — and useful — napkin rings. Free instructions are available here on this website.
Turn “Hurt” Books Into “Junk Journals,” Scrapbook Albums or Other Art Projects
Bits & Pieces Mixed Media Art and Scrapbooking Album Featuring Upcycled / Recycled Dictionary Pages, Chipboard Embellishments and Original Photographs
If you have any books with damaged spines, missing pages, or other problems that make them unreadable, you can still salvage the pages to use in craft projects. Here’s an example of a scrapbook I made from a damaged dictionary.
Reclaim and Upcycle the Fabric From Thrift Store Clothing
If you enjoy quilting or fiber art, this article contains ideas you can use to reclaim fabrics.
Alter and Upcycle Your Thrift Store Finds
If you head to the closest thrift store, you’re likely to find all kinds of interesting objects that can be altered and upcycled. One of my favorites thrift store finds was a wall art piece that I altered. I used to have pictures of it online, along with instructions for how to make a similar piece. I’m not sure where those photos went, but if I ever find them, I’ll update this page to add them.
So there you have it: Those are my suggestions for recycled crafts and upcycled crafts you can make if you’re hoping to save money, save the planet, conserve resources, make the most of the things you have on hand already or celebrate Earth Day in a sustainable, ecologically conscious manner.
By Amy Solovay
About the Author: Amy Solovay is a crochet pattern designer, craft blogger and educator who learned to sew and make quilts as a young child. She holds a degree in textile design and spent about a decade working in the textile industry. She taught apparel marketing, trend forecasting and textile design courses to aspiring fashion industry professionals at California Design College. For five years, she worked as the Crochet Expert at TheSpruceCrafts.com, a web property owned by Dotdash Meredith, which is America’s largest publisher. Nowadays, she helps crafters improve their skills, and she teaches creative people how to earn income with crafts.
Page last updated on 3-14-2024. Thanks for visiting!