Soda Bottle Vase







Good day everyone! I was kinda busy these past few weeks (as always!) and lot of my projects have been held up because of that. So I decided to make something simple instead. This is another up-cycling project – turning a plastic soda bottle into a vase. Yep, nothing new here. It’s just a simple and easy project. However one of the step is new to me and I’m a bit struggling about it. We’ll get into that soon.








First of all, the material. I chose the standard 1.5 litre soda bottle for the job. The idea is to cut the bottle into two-third of its height and cut out a flowery pattern on it. I drew a simple flower motif with four equal length “petals” with additional flower and leaf hole patterns beneath it.








Cutting the flower petals is a daunting task but doable with a small scissors. The problem is with the hole patterns. Plastic bottle is quite thick and I couldn’t use cutter or craft knife to cut it, like, at all. The only solution is a youtube video that I saw where someone crafting the similar plastic bottle using a heated soldering iron.








With that solution in mind I grab an unused soldering iron, heat it up and start melting the plastic. A word of caution here, burning plastic is hazardous, I did it outdoors as it produce fumes. This is where it gets tricky, it is difficult to draw a pattern with a soldering iron. Lol. First you need a steady hand, and press just enough pressure to melt the plastic and create a hole. And then I slowly drag it over to create a pattern. Even when all of this is done successfully you still have those excess melted plastic all over the pattern you just made. In other word, it’s a bit messy.








I was thinking of heating the plastic (with a lighter or something), let it melt and tidy up the mess with a cutter. In the end I abort the idea as it might make it worst. So I just make do with trimming the plastic with scissors and cutter instead. The end result is not that pretty though, but I take it as a free hand-style type of pattern (keep positive!).








To finish it up I add two layers of coating – a top white with a gold bottom. I thought that making two tones of color would make it more appealing. See below for the end results:

















ardee


October 2017


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