Bottle Plastic Flower Jewellery

Hi all, this is my first Instructable, hope it's all right, I will try and keep dyslexic induced spelling errors to a minimum. I've been making these as a quick gift idea for a few years now, and they seem to go down well and are very easy to make.

you need some plastic; bottles work best as we will be melting it a bit and packaging plastic tends to burn rather than melt.

A few push split pins

and some jewellery findings to finish them off.

As far as tools go; A pair of scissors

A candle or lighter

Tweezers (optional but highly recommended)

and a pin.

Step 1: Cut Up Your Plastic

Start by cutting up your plastic into manageable sizes, I have managed to find coloured plastics but you can use a clear plastic and use a sharpie to colour it in, or a milk bottle (at least the ones from my area) gives you a nice opaque white.

I'm making a Pendant and a pair of earrings so I have cut my blue plastic into 9 small circles with a slight variation in size, 3 small, 3 medium, 3 big.

And 3 leaf shapes out of the green.

Step 2:

Next I've lit my candle and using the tweezers hover the circles over flame (not too close or it'll burn). It's a bit tricky to get the shape you want, you want it to curl up a bit but not too much (if you lick your finger you can bend then when they're still hot but do so at your own risk it will be very hot.

You want the petals to fit within one another, so make sure they still do, if not heat it back up and use the tweezers and the table to shape it a little. It's not difficult but can be a little fiddly.

Step 3:

Use your pin to poke some holes through the centre of your petals and the leaves, if it's a little tough carfeully heat the pin a little on the candle first.

Step 4:

Then comes the assembly, push the split pin through the petals, small first, then medium, big then the leaf. I have used a jewellery finding to add a little extra support at the back, so I popped the split pin through that and then split it (you don't need the finding but it helps).

Step 5:

Finally add it to your preferred Jewellery, I used a few links and added one to a necklace chain, and glued an earring stick to the other two. I have done dangly earrings before now and key-rings and phone charms pretty much anything you want (within reason of course).

Sorry the photos are a bit naff but hopefully they are clear enough to follow for anyone who wants to.