Recycled Plastic Valentine Hearts

Make cheap and simple valentine decorations from old plastic food containers and nail varnish.

This is an idea I originally shared as a contributor over on The Pinning Mama last year and as Valentines Day is looming I thought it was time to share the full tutorial here in case you want to have a go at making some easy Valentine decorations from old plastic food tubs.

All you need is:
Old plastic tubs
Nail Varnish
Water
Plenty of scrap paper, kitchen roll and nail varnish remover for cleaning up afterwards!

You can use pretty much any food tubs that you have, the effects you get may vary a little but that is all part of the fun!

I had a white plastic margarine tub and a clear plastic ice cream tub that I used for my marbled nail polish hearts.

Unless you are lucky enough to have a tub with no pictures or writing on it the first thing you need to do is remove any print.
I found the easiest way to do that was to give it a good scrub with a kitchen scourer and a cream cleaner. Here in the UK we have something called Cif (it used to be called Jif back in the day) which worked a treat.

Now just cut out your heart shapes, I drew round a cookie cutter first but you can freehand if you prefer.

Punch a hole now if you want to be able to hang your hearts.

Now the fun bit....
Fill another old plastic container with water and drip some nail varnish on the top.

Add as many colours as you want, play around, experiment with what you have.
DO NOT try to stir the nail varnish to make patterns - it will stick to whatever you are stirring with. You just have to be brave and go for it!

Dip your plastic heart in, then pull it out. That's it!
Now leave it propped up on some scrap paper to dry for a few minutes.
You need to add more nail varnish drops to the water for each heart, a little may be left on the water but not really enough for another dipping.

It's quite messy, you may find you marble the end of your finger like I did.

I found metallic nail varnishes showed up best on clear plastic, the results on white plastic were a little disappointing. It's so quick though, that if you don't like how one turns out you can just wipe it off with nail polish remover and start again. 

These could make good card toppers, or maybe gift tags too. Don't be restricted to just hearts for Valentines day either, you can cut out any shape that takes your fancy.

This marbling with nail polish is SO much fun and it really does feel like magic when you lift out your item and the pattern is just there. You don't know quite what you are going to get which is not ideal for those who like control, but I loved the surprise and to be honest most came out WAY better than I could ever have planned.

You might also be interested in:

Red and White Heart Decoration

IKEA Cactus Gift Wrap

Recycled Pen Pot Tutorial

Gold Heart Pot

I'll be sharing this project at these link parties

Red and White Heart Decoration

A Christmas decoration with a bit missing turned out to be just right for a decoration we can hang all year round.

After Christmas the house can seem a) super tidy or b) a bit bare.

We have a door going from the kitchen to the rest of the house, it's always open and apart from a rather lovely chicken door stop it's a bit plain. I was thinking in January that a wreath of some sort might look nice, maybe something with red flowers (we have red accessories in the kitchen) so I was checking out the sales of Christmas decorations in the shops to see if I could find anything suitable.

We have a shop in the UK called The Range, they basically sell everything apart from food and clothes. By the time I got there their Christmas decoration sale was pretty dire but I did find this:

It was originally £3.99 and obviously had something hanging in the middle though I have no idea what. I assume something Christmassy otherwise it's not really very festive. I asked if it would be reduced further as it was not all there and got 80% off - I got it for 80p, bargain!

I removed the little metal thing from the centre (I looked them up and it's called a "screw eye" but that seems a bit wrong somehow) and the rope that reminded me of a hangman's noose.

Then I set about decorating it somehow.

I tried to cut a red check scrapbook paper to fit the middle section, I thought I would just glue it on. After 2 attempts (thankfully with scrap paper - no scrapbook paper was harmed in my experiments!) I had to abandon that idea. It was just too hard to get a good fit all the way round.

I thought maybe a really simple design drawn on would work better and that's when I thought of my nail varnish pens. 

I doodled a few ideas then just drew an easy line, leaves and dots design on with the nail varnish pen.

Turns out it's hard to hold a nail varnish pen and take a photo at the same time - sorry!

I imagine you could get a similar effect with a fine permanent marker pen or paint and a fine brush, I was just using what I had.

A length of red ribbon to hang it and it's done. 

I had already popped a drawing pin on the top surface of the door for a Christmas decoration so I was able to just reuse that, it can't be seen at all and I'm not peppering the door with holes.

It's got a bit of a Scandinavian feel to it I think, definitely not Christmassy anyway.

If you decorate your house for Valentines day then on sale Christmas decorations might be a great source of materials. In our house we don't really do anything more than a card and chocolates/flowers for Valentines day so I'm planning for this to stay up all year round in a "pretty decoration on the door" kind of way. 

You might also be interested in:

Floating photo frame

IKEA Cactus Gift Wrap

Share a Coke With Picture

Gold Heart Pot

I'll be sharing this project at these link parties

Recycled Plastic Valentine Hearts

We seem to collect dozens of plastic tubs in our house so I was happy to find a way to recycle them into pretty valentine heart decorations.

I'm over at The Pinning Mama today with a tutorial to turn an old margarine tub into these pretty hanging hearts using the popular "marbling with nail polish" technique. 

Over the last year or so I've seen so many objects beautified with this technique I've been itching to try it out on something. 

They are super inexpensive and such fun to make, this nail polish marbling is like magic. It is a bit messy though and you have very little control over how your heart comes out - for me that was part of the fun!

Pop on over to The Pinning Mama now to see the full step by step tutorial here

Use them as decorations, gift tags, card toppers or anything else you can think of! Enjoy!