If you stumbled here by chance for the first time, you will soon find out that I love cutting up plastic bottles. I just find them to be an incredible resource of material that I can play with. Naturally, crafty recycled garden screamed plastic bottles for me. You all have seen the self watering planters you can make out of a plastic bottle, so naturally that is what I did. There was one bottle, where I couldn’t do that, and did not want to make a hole in the bottom; and you know what? Instead I filled the bottom with some river rocks, to create an adequate drainage, and it worked out really well.
First I gathered six bottles, peeled their labels and cut them in half. There they are, all cut up and even. Those little scissors really help.
One thing I had to make sure of is to cut the tops of the bottoms to fit inside the bottoms of the bottles just right: a little bit shorter then the outside portion.
Put them all together. Here is the part that I would change about this process. I think that if I were to do it again, at this point I would flip them all over on a newspaper and spray paint them.
I hot glued them to each other. First two at a time.
Then all together.
Next, I put a sheet of parchment over, and heated my iron, and then ran it over the tops of the bottles.
Once they were heated on top, the tops curled up and became lost the sharp edges.
Next I painted them. I used acrylics. I have to say two things. Spray paint worked better on plastic, and I should have done before the hot glue. This paint took a few layers, and as my kid called, it looked ‘rustic’. Ok. I’ll take it. Rustic it is.
After they were all painted, I wanted to wrap all of them in yarn. Nice and even. One thing that helped me with that is a hot glue gun. I would put dabs of it on every corner.
My awesome hot glue gun.
I kept going until the bottom.
I made a few bigger pots using bigger bottles also. These I spray painted, and it worked out really well.
Here are all my recycled containers. See the blue one with a little bow. That’s the one that couldn’t really be a self watering container. I filled it with rocks and pebbles to create good drainage, and so far my succulent seems very happy in there.
Lastly, fill them with ground. In this container, I planted some herbs. I will update the photo once they grow.
I used my two blue containers for my succulent plants. I am very happy with how it turned out.