Recycled Plastic - Pot Holder
Introduction: Recycled Plastic - Pot Holder
Recycling has so many options these days. Using plastic bags makes me feel very guilty of not saving our dear planet 'Earth'. I try my best to use cloth bags and avoid plastics to the extent possible. Personally, this is a very satisfying and inspiring project. This Summer, I bought 2 medium size pots for planting. As these pots weight >10 lbs, it was not a good idea to place these on the patio. Typically pots are not allowed to be placed on the patio. I didn't want to spend too much on buying expensive setup to grow something in these pots. With the Recycle contest, I thought of making something cool and useful right at home.
I normally collect and keep the groceries bag for reuse. At times I even carry these clean bags for groceries pick-up. Which means reducing the use of few plastic bags a few times. So, I decided to work on this project assuming this pot holder will be able to carry the weight for heavy pots. It did. I kept this pot hung for two days before adding the potting mix. I added a small cactus to experiment with. I was looking for options such that I could easily bring the pots indoors.
You will learn all of the steps from 'Recyclable plastic bags' -> 'Strips' -> 'Rope' -> 'Pot Holder'.
Hope you enjoy spending some time with nature!
Supplies
1. Groceries plastic bags (20 total). Depends on the size and thickness of the plastic bags.
2. Scissors
3. Pot(s)
4. Nails
5. Hammer
6. Potting mix
7. Plant of your choice
Step 1: Collect All the Plastic Bags
This is the first step in which I decided to gather all the good quality and clean groceries bags I had at home. I made sure to pick and choose the right choice of plastic bags. I then ironed out (with hands only. Do not use iron here :-) Then, neatly placed all these plastic bags together as shown in pics 2 & 3.
Step 2: Cutting Into Strips
This is the second step in which I cut the sealed side of the plastic bags. 389
Opened up the plastic bag to make sure it looks good. Then folded it along the length (see pic 2). As the plastic bag was of a good quality, I decided to cut strips of width 2 inches approximately. Then, folded the plastic bag into half and again into half of that. Cut it along the length as shown in pic 3. As we would need to fold these strips anyways, exact measurement and perfection is not needed in here. A rough measure works fine. I then collected all these strips and bundled these together.
Step 3: Braiding and Joining the Strips
In this step, I decided the braid these strips of plastics. This increases the strength and sturdiness of these strips when compared to just using plain strips as is. So, I took 3 strands of the strips for braiding. Now, the joining was the most crucial step. It is important to know that this is not a regular project with a straight one strip to work on. There are small strips to be joint to make sense of it. I then decided to place the next strip just on top of the first one towards its tail end and continue to braid. This might be a little tricky and needs attention and concentration to do it nicely. In this way, I continue to add the strips as they ended until I made a complete length of approximately 24 feet in length. See pic 4 & 5.
Step 4: Prepare the Rope for the Pot Holder
The length of this plastic rope depends on the pot size and shape. I measured 8 strips of length 3 ft each out work best for me. This would be high enough to hang comfortably on my patio. As I was progressing on the rope, I tried to see the length and it measured a total of 24-25 ft approximately. Then, I folder it into 8 small strings as seen in the image.
Step 5: Cut the Rope
Now, the plastic rope is cute into 8 smaller ropes as shown in the image. These ropes are now ready for knotting together to make the actual pot holder.
Step 6: Get the Pot Holder Ready
In this step, I laid all the 8 ropes in 4 pairs on the ground as shown in the image 1. Then, tied a knot on one side together as you can see in the image 1. Then, at approximately 9-10 inches length, I tied a knot with the 2nd rope from the first pair with the first rope from the next pair. Refer image 3 for this step. This made 4 knots with 4 pairs of ropes. Then, I tied the next two in similar fashion with the first from one pair and the second from the next one. 21