Egg Carton and Magazine Flowers with Rolled Magazine Vase

The challenge for this month's Whip-lash is to "make something that utilizes pre-used/pre-loved/trash/junk/waste items".  I really wanted pick my brain and think of a creative use for some household waste items.  So, from a plastic egg carton, an unwanted magazine, two empty toilet paper rolls, whiteout, a bit of acetone (nail polish remover), a pencil, some rubber bands, a bit of wire and some glue, I give you my contribution to Whip-lash: a vase of flowers.

    

I initially wanted to write up a tutorial, but couldn't find the time to do that, so I'm just going to talk about the process in detail.  Each flower is cut out of an individual egg cup from a plastic egg carton; the first cuts that I made were to separate the cups.  The bottom of each egg cup usually has a little "hill" for the egg to rest on, so I just made six ot seven deep cuts from the top of the cup to the bottom of the "hill".  Then for each section, I cut out a petal shape freehand.  The flowers were already starting to look pretty cool...

But since it's a recycling project, I dug up something else I could recycle and use...a bottle of sticky/nearly dry whiteout correction fluid.  I thinned the whiteout with a bit of acetone, shook the bottle up for a good while, and the whiteout was ready to use (probably not for its intended purpose...it's a bit thin for that, but it suited my plans for it perfectly).  I used the whiteout brush to paint the flowers with the revitalized correction fluid.  I had just enough for one thin coat of whiteout on each flower. 

While waiting for the whiteout to dry, I started to work on making a vase to hold the flowers.  I leafed through a magazine that I rescued earlier this week from a woman who got off of the subway the same time I did; she was about to toss the magazine in the garbage when I intercepted (hehe) and asked if I could have it.  I tried to pick out dark-colored pages with no text.  Since I only had one magazine, I couldn't find enough pages that matched my criteria, so I basically just ripped out all full pages with only a limited amount of text.

 

I took a magazine page and put the side that I wanted to show down on the table.  I then smeared some glue all over the page, save the bottom two inches.  Then starting from the bottom of the page and using a round pencil as a guide, I rolled up the page (similar to how you would make paper beads).  I made several of these rolls, and arranged them in a line on a table in manner that I found pleasing.  I cut an empty toilet paper roll in half, then stacked it on top of another toilet paper roll.  The outside of of both rolls were covered with glue, and then I carefully positioned the magazine rolls along the outside of the toilet paper rolls.  I secured the top and bottom of the roll with a rubber band to help form a stronger bond.  I took the unused half of the toilet paper roll and cut it down the side so that it could lay flat.  From this "cardboard," I then cut out a circle with a diameter slightly larger than that of a toilet paper roll.  (You could trace an empty toilet paper roll, but since I didn't have one on hand, I just eyeballed it).  I scored the edges and folded them up so that I had several tabs.  I covered the tabs with glue, and pushed it into position as the "bottom" of the vase.

While waiting for the glue to dry, I went back to the flowers.  I had intended to use coathangers for the stems, but, hehe, I don't own wire cutters and was having a heck of a time trying to cut them with scissors.  So I used a thin wire that I found in the closet, and cut several foot-long pieces with my scissors (which, by the way, now have several new "teeth").  Using an X-acto knife, I poked a hole in the center of each flower, and threaded a wire through.  I bent the end of the wire in a circle and added some glue to secure the wire. 

Now for the finishing touches.  I trimmed the ends of the magazine rolls so that they were even with the toilet paper rolls.  To complete the bouquet of flowers, I decided to make some leaves. I went back to the same, albeit thinner, magazine, and searched for any pages that had a green-colored area.  I cut out leaf shapes with approximately a 2 inch tail.  I folded the leaf parts in half to make veins, and applied glue to the tails of the paper leaves.  Then I wrapped the tail of each leaf around the wire stem of the flowers in random positions.  I brought the flowers together in a bunch, and tied them together with a rubber band.  I trimmed the wires one last time, and placed them in the magazine vase.  For extra embellishment, I decided to make a few longer, grassy leaves.  At this point, I just used whatever pages were left in the the magazine and cut out long, thin triangles.  I added a blade of "grass" to the flower arrangement here and there to finish the piece. 

Now I have a "new" vase of flowers to use for decoration in the apartment.

Comments

[Valerie]

WoW! This looks great. I am especially drawn to that vase. I'd love to see a tutorial for it sometime...

[Christine]

Very clever use of "waste" products- I love it :)

[Jamie]

That's very cool. When I first heard "egg-carton," I was thinking those pastel colored styrofoam things...this is WAY better!

[futuregirl]

These are totally awesome. When I first saw your photo, I thought they were beautiful. I was amazed after I read about how you made them. Ingenious!

[lera]

WOW! You continue to amaze me.

(I'm tempted to try some amigurumi because of your wonderful creations.)

[Regina]

Wow! This is wonderful! So creative!

[megan]

Those flowers look amazingly life-like: you can tell that you've looked at real petals before! Love your inventiveness with the white-out usage too.

[dorie]

neat!

[Chelle]

This is sooo cool.!

[sylvie]

wow, great results, I love those !!

[Linda/RV Vagabonds]

Wow! Just Wow! Amazing creativity.

[Kari]

I'm sorry it took me so long to drop by and leave a comment on these! LOVELY!!! Ingenius use of materials!!! I saw the first photo and thought "how are flowers recycling?" - but they're a GREAT re-use! Good luck! (Have they announced the winners yet?)

[Donna]

Love it!

[Kari]

Yeay! You won! (Well, one of the winners, but you should be so proud!) Congrats! *hugs*

[Jen Leheny]

that is AWESOME! :)

[Danielle]

This is a great idea! Great job in reducing and reusing materials. I have a group I facilitate called Trash to Treasures. I cannot wait to use this type of project. WOW!