Introduction: Flowers Made From Plastic Bags
These are my instructions for making flowers out of old plastic bags.
plastic bags are good because they come in all sorts of colours, are pretty tough and well, if you're making flowers you might as well be green and recycle a bag or two.
This instructable gives the directions for making a rose like the one below.
Step 1: Getting Your Materials Together
Before you start you will need:
- Plastic bags - lots of pretty colours!
- Green string - preferably something quite stiff. I used some plastic parcel string.
- Scissors
- A sewing needle - one with an eye big enough to thread your string through.
- A knitting needle - or anything pointy
You might also want a pen and some sticky tape.
Step 2: Making Petals
1) Take a plastic bag and cut the handles and bottom off. Now you should have a plastic tube.
2) Cut straight along one edge of the tube to make it into a sheet.
3) Now cut your sheet into strips about 4cm thick (that's about 1.5" in old money).
4) Take a strip and fold in one edge by about 2.5cm (1"). Keep folding it over and over so you end up with a flat roll of plastic.
5) Now cut the roll as shown in the diagram below.
6) Unfold the shape you cut out. You should now have a long strip of petal shapes!
Repeat steps 4 to 6 with another one of the strips you made in step 3. this should give your enough petals to make a good sized flower. You can of course do more, or less, depending on how big you want your flowers to be.
Step 3: Making the Flower.
7) Take one end of the strip of petals and roll it onto the knitting needle. Keep rolling until the whole strip is wrapped around the needle. Add another strip to make the flower head bigger.
Take care to make sure that the bottom edges of the strips line up.
Now carefully remove the knitting needle.
8) Hold the flower head together by pushing the sewing needle through its base.
Step 4: Attaching the Stem
9) Cut three equal lengths of the green string. Each one should be a little more than twice the length you want your stem to be.
Now take the flower head you just made and remove the needle. Widen that hole with the knitting needle. It needs to be quite big, but take care not to rip the plastic.
10) Now thread each length of string through the hole so that the flower head sits at the midpoint of each.
11) Tie up each string. This holds the flower head together.
12) Now pair up the ends of the original three lengths and braid them together tightly.
13) Before you run out of string, tie the ends together so they wont fray. In the diagram each pair of strings is lettered. Tie pair A to pair B, pair B to pair C and pair C to pair A.
14) Chop off the extra string.
Step 5: Finishing Off and Notes
To finish off your rose, play around with opening out the petals so that they look nice.
Of course you don't have to make a rose, I made a daffodil and another flower by experimenting with different petal shapes and using different coloured strips of bag.
One thing I didn't do, which might be nice, is to cut some smaller green petal shapes to attach at the base of the flower head. This should make the transition from flower to stem a little more realistic looking.
Have fun!
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45 Comments
7 years ago
(sigh)wish i cud try this but every time i try to get a needle through something,i end up pricking my finger instead so when i saw this tutorial i thought :there will be blood. Hahaha
8 years ago on Introduction
Good one. I liked the color of the flower. So pretty.
I tried making the flower in a different way, check it out here
http://anu-colours.blogspot.in/
Hope you will like it :)
14 years ago on Introduction
Your colors are so pretty--all of my plastic bags are white. Do you know of any way to color them permanently? (not anything like markers, watercolors etc)
Reply 9 years ago on Introduction
How about spray paint? Not a very green option though :(
Reply 14 years ago on Introduction
Maybe you could try substituting plastic for satin or silk?
Reply 14 years ago on Introduction
i am positive that would work except it wouldnt be quite as green.
Reply 14 years ago on Introduction
True, and you could also use those Debbie Meyer green bags too I guess. It's my understanding that they have some certain number of uses? If you pay money to get them in the first place, this would be a good way of extending their use. I love recycling :D !!
10 years ago on Introduction
muio legal!!! amei e já fiz uma, ficou ótimo!
10 years ago on Introduction
WOW! I thought this flower would flop over and be a waste of space, but I love it. its beautiful! I think using more than one color of bag would be pretty. :)
11 years ago on Introduction
Totally awesome! Thanks for sharing your hard work and great talent!
11 years ago on Introduction
This is pretty nice artificial flowers, great tutorials as well.
12 years ago on Introduction
Thats a really clever idea! And much better then trying to shop for flowers!
12 years ago on Introduction
So fine! My girl has TONS of colorful bags, I'm gonna' surprise her. That way, I don't have to shop flowers, I can make 'em and RECYCLE at the same time.
12 years ago on Step 5
I loved how you drew out the steps on the white board! Simple, easy to follow and a totally reduction in actual steps. Great job!
12 years ago on Step 5
Gorgeous instructable! It would be very nice if you descrie the proces of making 2nd and 3rd variant of flowers in a more detailed way.
13 years ago on Introduction
EXCELLENT, EXCELLENT, EXCELLENT tutorial with the drawings thing!!
I want to see more of that technique to teach :D
13 years ago on Introduction
Awesome!!!!! subbed!!!!!
13 years ago on Introduction
Wow! Very nice! I would have never thought of that, I guess it's a good way of using up plastic bags instead of throwing them away and hurting the Earth.
13 years ago on Introduction
Very lovely! Would not have guessed they were made from plastic bags.
13 years ago on Step 4
Thanks for the easy to follow instructions! Great tutorial.