Recycled plastic bags

 Quite some time ago I posted about a recycling project I'd had a go at where I'd taken plastic bags and turned them into ATC's.  That blog post is here, anyway, as it's Earth Day on Sunday 22nd, My Stamp Box is marking it with a recycling themed blog post.  I thought I'd do some more recycled bags but this time I've done a few step photo's to show you how you can do it for yourself.

Firstly here are the finished ATC's using stamps from My Stamp Box called Garden Sketches:

I took about 5 bags and cut off the top and bottom so I could flatten them out completely.



















Sandwich the bags in between two pieces of kitchen paper and iron over it.  You must keep the iron moving at all times as you want the bags to fuse and shrink evenly. My iron was quite hot.

Take off the paper and turn the plastic over a couple of times as it sticks to the paper. Be careful as it gets very hot. 

Once all the layers are fused together you end up with one sheet of thick plastic which can be cut quite easily.

I cut mine into ATC sized pieces and painted gesso all over so I could add acrylic paints.

You could try it with coloured and patterned bags to see what sort of effect you end up with.

I also made a few more which I sent to Sid for a swap on the UK Stampers site and as he's received them now I can show you here:

Jaine