Thursday 19 May 2011

Quick bunting how to

Some of you have asked about the bunting - here's how.
HEALTH AND SAFETY - WORK IN A WELL VENTILATED AREA

Collect together lots of plastic bags and wrappers, the more colourful the better.

Place a sheet of baking parchment on your ironing surface and start to cover it with strips cut from the plastic.

Build up a couple of layers leaving no gaps.
Put another piece of baking parkment over the top and heat up your iron.
Irons vary, mine is a cheap one I use for craft and it needs to be in the cotton range.
Iron over the baking parchment quickly. You will see the plastic start to curl and shrink.  Take a peek to see if it has stuck together, if not give it another quick pass with the hot iron.  If you leave the iron in one place the plastic will disappear!

TAKE CARE - HOT PLASTIC STICKS AND BURNS.

The strips of plastic have melted together.
I turn it over and check the back to make sure it is all stuck down.
Cut out a pile of triangles...

and zig-zag stitch them to some tape.


This one was made with an old plastic document pocket filled with sequins or you could use snips of plastic.
Have fun and take care.
(Some books recommend using a respirator mask when melting plastic.)

9 comments:

Lalabibaby @ Dreaming of The Simple Life said...

Wow another recycling project .... brilliant idea and tutorial Jill. Received my invite many thanks .... see you in June x

Jane Housham said...

Yes, thanks for the handsome invitation -- will hopefully make it along. I love this bunting!

Joanna said...

Great bunting, thanks for the how-to.

Marigold Jam said...

Looks like the method I used some while back to make a bag but which I actually turned into small pieces on cards! I did find though that not all plastic bags seem to stick properly not sure why!

Great idea to make it into bunting.

menopausalmusing said...

Just back from the burns unit, typing this with one finger (joke!!!!!).........

great tutorial, shall play........ thank you.

Emma said...

Great tutorial. I've never made a collage but love ironing Coop bags - I'm using them as part of a hanging. Do you think that as they're biodegradable the hanging will one day disintegrate?!

ju-north said...

What a greatr idea! Will 'file' it away!

thekathrynwheel said...

Wow, this is great, fab tutorial. And don't worry - we hear your health and safety warnings!!!

LAC EMP 2020 said...

Jill,
I made this stuff before but only used old supermarket carriers to do mine. If only I'd known I needed to eat so much chocolate..... I'd have been able to make yards of bunting out of my left over wrappers! Lesley