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ReCreating for Christmas – A white Christmas

Recycled Plastic milk cartons are the basis of these white Christmas designs.

After completing my Angels scrollsaw projects, I made a variation to the designs by adding wings, halos and hymn sheet cut from the plastic. It gives a delicate and slightly transparent effect.

A heat gun is used to shape the cut out pieces, either by hand (with thick gloves!) or by bending the warmed plastic around a piece of dowel.

One of the biggest challenges of working with plastic milk cartons is that food grade 2 plastic is virtually impervious to gluing. After many experiments with different glues, a hot glue gun was the most successful, however, the slight transparency of the plastic means that any glue used can be seen.

With this in mind I created two designs that slot together, rather than glue.
1. An entire “heavenly host” of small angels for table decoration. The heads are cut from pine. These require just one dob of glue to join the head / body / wings.
2. A slice-form Christmas tree, no glue at all!
Both of these decorations ‘glow’ as they stand above flameless tea lights.

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Plastic milk carton flowers

While rinsing out milk cartons for recycling one day, I wondered how they might be ReCreated into something decorative.

I started by experimenting with the plastic to find it’s characteristics. As it’s food grade 2 plastic, it is virtually impervious to absorbing anything – that includes glue and paint! A hot-glue gun is the only glue I had any success with, but it is brittle and care has to be taken that petals don’t snap off when working with it.

I began by cutting petal and leaf shapes and, using a heat gun, molded them around a piece of wooden dowel to curve them.

I managed to add pastel shading with a “staining” method, using a rag and alcohol inks to rub colour onto the petals. The next step was gluing the petals to the stem with a hot-glue gun . The flower stems are plastic balloon sticks, which is the same grade plastic as the milk cartons. I also stained these with colour. I found that I had to reinforce the stems by inserting wire inside, as the first ones I made snapped! The wire also enables the stem to curve slightly, making it look more natural than a straight stick.

The sepals and leaves are then secured with florist tape to the stem. I chose white tape which I also stained so the colours matched as closely as possible.