the plea of a crunchy/thrifty/crafty mama!

[jo_mama]

Hi. My name is Jo and I cannot stand to throw anything away.

This is a problem I face at least once a month. "I can't throw that away because surely I can use it for something." My craft area in the basement is becoming ridiculous, and I need help coming up with neato 'treasure' ideas to make from the following trash . . .

puzzle pieces
play-doh containers
various shampoo bottles
playing cards
little chewed-on board books

I may add to this list later.

Any ideas? I consider myself a pretty crafty person, but I'm out of ideas, here.

Thanks!

[wooly_wonderful]

You can use the puzzle pieces and playing cards to make and embellish greeting cards. You can use the play-doh containers and some fabric or felt to make pencil/ crayon/ marker holders. But if it were me I would make more play-doh and put it in the containers. For the shampoo bottles, if they are clear, I would take the labels off and make those ocean bottles with glitter for the kids. For the board books I have no ideas.

[mama1980]

How about this, for the board books:

http://www.libraryforlife.org/blogs/...structions.pdf

I figure, if it works for regular sized hardbound books, board books would be adorable for little for kiddos or adults who appreciate a bit of whimsy

[bezbabe]

Originally Posted by mama1980 How about this, for the board books: http://www.libraryforlife.org/blogs/...structions.pdf I figure, if it works for regular sized hardbound books, board books would be adorable for little for kiddos or adults who appreciate a bit of whimsy

i've done this before and it is super cute but i never thought of it with kids books; great idea! also, you can, what's the word?, recover the board books...i started one for my dd where it had 12 pages and i just mod-podged and decorated the pages with pages torn out of an old dictionary or something and left a space for a picture of each school year.
for puzzle pieces, i've seen where you glue them around the edge of a frame and paint it. if you don't have plain frames, you could even just cut the shape out of a cereal box.

[Goofy]

some great ideas How do you make the ocean bottles? My dd would love them!

The playing cards...could you make them into a matching game? If you had a few from each of several decks with different decor on the back? Just color/paint the side with the numbers and match the back sides. Also at 3 or 4 my son would have loved to have any playing cards to play with even if they didn't match or make a full deck.

Puzzle peices...paint them and put them on barets for the hair, put a hole in and add to a neckless or pull cord for a bag ect.