Barefoot and crafting in the kitchen

April 5, 2009 10:26 AM

If you’ve got extra kitchenware about is never used to cook or contains food anymore, here are some (low calorie!) ways to use it again. If you’ve kicked your caffeine habit, your metal coffeepots can become lamps, or your teapot can morph into a camel. Other items of kitchenware can become recycled toys.

If you now eat oatmeal instead of muffins for breakfast, your child might enjoy the novelty of a muffin tin meal, or making recycled crayons, or counting down the days until a birthday. Muffin tins can also be used as a way to display curios, or collages, or become wall art. If you’ve sworn off cookies, your old cookie sheet can become an Advent or perpetual calendar. Cookie tins can be redecorated, or turned into a coin bank or purse. Cookie tins can become tambourines, ukuleles, or banjos. Or they can become clocks, bracelets, ribbon and string dispensers, or figurines. However, if as you craft you find yourself scarfing down the crumbs that lurk in the crevices of your old cookie tins, you are probably not over your cookie habit and should reserve at least one baking sheet and tin for their original purpose.

posted by orange swan (7 comments total)

The recycled coffee pots certainly look cool, but I'm afraid they are going to fall short when it comes to the genuine function of a lampshade, which is to diffuse light. The holes in the metal simply create a geometric grid of bright spots on the shade itself, and also cast a series of bright spots around the wall. Some may like this effect, but it's not for me.

My own efforts went in a different direction, which was to use synthetic fibers wrapped around a box frame to diffuse light.
posted by Tube at 11:06 AM on April 5, 2009

Making recycled crayons is enormous fun. Using recycled crayons, not so much.
posted by DU at 11:28 AM on April 5, 2009

Don't they draw as well after being baked? They look so pretty and look as though they'd be easy for a small child to grasp.
posted by orange swan at 11:38 AM on April 5, 2009

Well, they don't have the "fine" point that even a crayon has. Also, the mixed colors that look great in an object don't come out on paper very well.

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. The craft itself is a lot of fun to do and has novelty value. Plus it uses up the crayon stubs.
posted by DU at 12:12 PM on April 5, 2009

lovely stuff - especially the lamp in the first link. I have an old used-to-be-silver-plated tea set in my bathroom that I now use for storage - cosmetics in the creamer, swabs in the sugar bowl, and tampons in the teapot. it looks great!

I love these crafty posts! (now all I need is a post showing what to do with the items that really are cluttering up my house - scotch boxes)
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 12:18 PM on April 5, 2009

Hmm. Yes, the mixing of colours might not work so well when drawing with them. I remember when I was a little girl that colouring over one crayon's colour with another tended not to work so well. There were exceptions, though. I still remember how I used to combine yellow and orange and red to get the right shade of strawberry blond for to use in my Nancy Drew colouring book.
posted by orange swan at 12:58 PM on April 5, 2009 [1 favorite]

i think this site has some cool stuff
posted by storeme at 2:20 PM on May 1, 2009