Adult Shrinky Dinks: Upcycled Plastic Soda Bottles Become A Mod Window Shade
Filed under Florence Italy, Luxecycle, Noted
I saw this “flowered” window covering earlier this week in an art gallery. It was made with the bumpy bottoms of half liter soda bottles that were shrunk in the oven a la Shrinky Dinks. (There was also a room divider made using the same technique at the gallery). I love it because it uses trash-pickable items, to create something functional and pretty. I immediately ran home to experiment. Since most tourists in Florence are incapable of properly recycling their plastic bottles, even though there are public recycling bins on almost every corner of the city, it was (sadly) easy to snag enough bottles for this project, just by pulling bottles from trash bins on my way home from the train station.
(Yes. I recycled the rest of the bottles properly).
To make this flowered window covering:
1. Carefully cut the bottoms off the plastic soda bottles using a utility knife.
2. If kitchen fires and huffing fumes scare you, skip the next 3 steps.
3. Cover a plain (non insulated) cookie sheet with aluminum foil or with baking parchment (I used a cut up paper grocery bag instead of parchment).
4. Bake the plastic pieces in a 350 degree oven for 1 or 2 minutes. Plastic is highly INFLAMMABLE. Do NOT leave your kitchen during the baking process and be sure to have EXCELLENT VENTILATION as heating plastic will cause it to off-gas. Also, as general kitchen safety, you should always have a fire extinguisher handy.
5. Let the now shrunken, slightly melted, flower-shaped plastic pieces cool on the cookie sheet.
6. Drill a small hole at the top and bottom of each flower. (I used a hammer and nail to make the holes).
7. Thread fishing line through the holes at the top and the bottom of each flower to form a chain.
8. Tie each chain to your window’s already existing window hardware. The chains in the photo are tied directly to the burglar bars on the exterior of the window. Obviously you can vary the amount of privacy you get by layering your chains. Alternately, you can tie, staple or nail the chains to a piece of scrap wood or spare tree branch and mount that on the interior or exterior of your window.
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6 Comments
Max, those are so clever! I love the idea of turning trash into something beautiful.
The other day we were at our local neighborhood restaurant and they had a new art exhibit on the wall. It was fish. When you look closely you see that they are all made with old tennis shoe soles, cell phone chargers, plastic toys, all sorts of things that you don’t normally find in a recycle bin. They were very cleverly made. Also, they were for sale for exhorbitant amounts of money. I will see if I can get pictures next time I am there. They really were cute.
NO! Putting soda bottles in the oven is a VERY BAD IDEA.
There are about 2000 variants of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) which is used to make soda bottles. They all behave differently at different temperatures. In general, somewhere north of 400 degrees (F), they will all start outgassing ammonia, carbon monoxide, and cyanide. Among other things you don’t want to breathe.
If you are 100% positive your entire oven is at 350 degrees, then you will probably be OK. But chances are there’s quite a bit of variation in there and it’s all too easy for some of the PET to get a little too hot. And you probably don’t have the right kind of fire extinguisher to deal with it if it catches fire (when even more bad things happen).
Re-using soda bottles is good. But this is not a good way to do it.
I would never put this plastic in an oven. The fumes or even the smell would really bother me. How about putting it outdoors in a solar oven? Or, on the grill with the lid up to see how it was melting. Otherwise, I love this idea. And, they have red bottles? Nice! I am picturing using 20 oz bottle and making earrings or bracelets. No, they would not be for everyone…lol.
This would probably be a great project to do in a pizza box solar oven (like Girl Scouts use to bake cookies! That’s a good idea, because then you don’t have to worry about the ventilation or a kitchen fire. I’m going to try that when I get back to the states. However, as Theron stated above, there are temperature safety issues which would still have to be dealt with even outside using a solar cooker.
I wouldn’t use the grill for this project, it would be too hard to control the temperature. Plus the open fire aspect seems scary…
Since my oven in Italy is a Celsius oven (and I’m a dumb American), I use a fancy infrared thermometer designed for pizza ovens to spot check the temperature in Fahrenheit. This would be a good tool for solar cooking too.
I melt plastic bottles on a fairly regular basis, and have found that using a toaster oven outdoors is the best way to avoid potentially hazardous fumes.
I would absolutely agree that using your indoor oven is a horrible idea. You have no idea how breathing all those fumes will affect you later in life, if not immediately. A closely watched toaster oven outdoors is a much better idea. Make art, but stay safe!