Michele Made Me

Winners and Wreaths

by

The other day for my 100th post, I must say you really came through. I am just so impressed. I want to thank you for taking the time to visit and play along with my little word-association game. Wow, I had SO MUCH FUN reading all those words and imagining the crafty possibilities! And I am very excited to divulge the names of the giveaway winners!
Also as promised, I will be sharing the results of my insane word-related crafty scrambling over the last day and a half…
So yesterday at noon, the Random Number Generator magically conjured up the following numbers:
10 and 36,
which respectively belong to:
Rebecca and GerryART!
Congratulations to the two winners! Yippee!!! I will be sending your packages as soon as I get your coordinates!
Now as far as Rebecca and GerryART’s words were concerned, they turned out to be quite challenging in terms of inspiring crafts. Of course now that I think about it, perhaps I should have made my word (atmosphere) a little less, I don’t know, out there… Nevertheless, I take full responsibility, and did my best to present you with something nice.
So, first let me tell you what I was dealing with. My two inspiration words from Rebecca and GerryART were: BREATH and BLOGISPHERE (in that order, yes). Uh-huh.
So I started by, you know, doing some really quick brainstorming. Like, for example, breath is clear and colourless. The blogisphere is this neat weblike non-place that exists electrically in the air. This was, believe it or not, helpful. It led me, eventually, to transparent plastic. And that led to water bottles. Luckily I had three of them under my worktable. But I was going to need more…
That led to an afternoon treasure hunt in our neighbourhood. I have never wished for litter quite so much as I did yesterday. In fact, I’ve never WISHED FOR litter. Not true. Yesterday I not only wished for, but prayed for litter. Of the clear plastic bottle variety. The boys and I went out and scoured every fence bottom, every underside of every bush, and every icky ditch where stuffs collect within a 1 km radius. We must have walked a total of 5 km in search for my brand of gold. And we were successful. The area around the high school yielded a surprising number and variety of plastic bottles. I even discovered a new drink I’d never seen before called Coke Zero! Anyone? Has anyone heard of this stuff? We managed to collect a total of 18 plastic bottles. 18! Can you believe it? I was so pleased. Now the crafting could begin.
Let’s get to it, shall we?
Tutorial: Plastic Bottle Wreath
  1. Gather your plastic bottles. Wash them very very well.
  2. Cut them into 3 sections as shown below.
  3. Take the straight middle cylindrical sections. Make 2 to 4 equidistant cuts 4/5 of the way around each cylinder so they can now bend but they’re still in one piece.
  4. Join them. I used good quality packing tape to join my bent cylinders into a tubular wreath base. Make it as big or as small as you like. I used 13 bottles to make my wreath base.
Next, I cut a cylinder into 1/2″ wide loops. I then cut the loops in half to make short curvy strips as shown below (a). I cut my strips into these spidery decorations (c) which I hot-glued to the outer sides of my wreath base. I made some with long “legs” and some with short “legs” for variety. I left the top area of the wreath base free of decorations for now.
The bottoms of the bottles I used as “floral” decorations around the top area of the wreath base.
I used a few bottle tops for interest as well, cutting them as follows.
I made a few flowers by taking some of those bottle bottoms and cutting them as shown in photos 5 to 7a. I hot-glued those to the top area of the wreath base amongst the other floral bottle bases. Photo 7b shows an alternative cutting pattern.
And here are some shots of the finished “breathy-blogisphere” inspired plastic bottle wreath!

Another challenge complete. Just under the wire mind you. But there you have it!
I hope you have a lovely lovely day!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  2. maree says

    Whoa- you have risen to the blogisphere challenge!!!!! My daughter is a Coke Zero lover so she will love to see what you have magically conjured up with her castoffs (well not actually hers but you know what I mean). Love this and that last photo against the sky makes it look so airy. Well done you:) Ciao

  4. Michelle L. says

    What a cool cool atmospheric wreath! I love your creation, and love that you had a really hard challenge and transcended. It is completely gorgeous. Your photography: wow. Using segments of bottles as the wreath base: brilliant.

  5. Mascottblog says

    I love the last picture, with the light shining through your art work !!! …( I see some more flowers 😉 And … The idea of the base is interesting … We do use a lot of plastic bottles, we drink bottled water , unfortunately you live too far away , I could have sent you tons of them ! Congratulations to the winners , and to you , you were up to the challenge you set yourself …

  6. GerryART says

    OMG, Michele, what a creative, crafty wizard you are !
    You've met your challenge with such a clever design. It fits the description to a T.
    This wreath is a gossamer delight.
    Plus you've removed litter from you neighborhood with the help of some eager assistants.
    [BTW, I have seen Coke Zero on the grocery shelf.]
    All this in a day and a half?
    And,
    now for the best part – – – – I'M A WINNER ! !
    Thanks for allowing me to be part of this unusual opportunity.
    Rebecca, are we lucky or what ! ! !
    Hugs,
    Gerry

  11. Sherry says

    Wow – fantastic creation and so imaginative with the two words. Congratulations to the two winners too!

    (Coke Zero – not one of my favourites I must admit, zero sugar, zero taste!)

  15. PEACHES says

    I love this a million ways to Sunday! I was thinking about cutting up bottles for something X-masy this year but I never thought about a wreath! All those oodles of plastic tendrils could really come out nice and wintery, you know? Like snow spiders. Yeah, that's it –SNOW SPIDERS here I come!

  16. Kristen @ ladybug-blessings.com says

    wow, that came out awesome!! I wanted to let you know about a linky party/tutorial post I have started. It is called Handmade Tuesdays and I feature a tutorial from a crafter and then I have a linky where people can link up their projects. Please come link up every Tuesday! 🙂

  18. Rebecca says

    Wonderfully put together!
    Regarding Coke Zero, it's quite a popular drink in Sweden, marketed as the manly alternative to Coke Light *giggle*

  23. Beansieleigh says

    Very pretty, I've been saving my bottles to do something like this, so thanks for the tutorial! I see you crochet?.. Me too! Love how your ripple afghan is coming along!… TGIF, and have a great weekend! ~tina

  27. Melissa says

    Bah! I had made my plastic bottle post last week and scheduled it for yesterday. For some reason your updates had not shown up on my sidebar or dashboard or I would totally have edited it to includ this very airy wreath. You managed to make plastic bottles look wispy! So pretty Michelle!

  30. Lori says

    LOVE THE WREATH!!! DARLING! I am so glad you linked up to Thrilling Thursday @ Paisley Passions 🙂 I am going to feature your post tomorrow. Feel free to stop by and grab and "I Thrilled on Thursday" button off my sidebar, if you like 🙂 Hope to see you at the Thrilling Thursday Linky Party again soon!!!

    ~Lori @ Paisley Passions