Community Voices for Health

By: Rachel Ventura 

I love creating things for my home. I’ve made all sorts of little creations that are displayed throughout my house. It’s fun making them, I save a ton of money, and it makes the house feel more “homey.” Sure, not everything is as nice or as perfect as something you may buy in a store, but it’s made with love, hard work, and good intentions, which to me, is priceless.

I made this wall hanging years ago, for the bathroom. It was relatively easy to make. I used embroidery hoops in different sizes, and covered them in fabrics of different prints, and secured it with a hot glue gun.

We recently updated our bathroom, and changed the color scheme slightly. We kept the turquoise blue on the walls, but went with white and gray accents, instead of brown and tan. I planned on keeping the same wall hanging, just switching the fabrics. I went out and bought a few pieces of fabric and was ready to make the piece over, but when I went to take the hoops apart, some of them broke. So I decided to try something different.

My first thought was to cover some picture frames in fabric, just the outer frame part. Then I saw a few ideas online where people covered canvases with paper or fabric. It looked great, but I really didn’t want to spend the money on canvases, especially just to have them sitting behind the fabric, not really being used for their purpose.

Then one day, I was putting some boxes into the recycle bin, and I thought to myself, “I could totally cover these in fabric and hang them on the wall!” They were similar in size to the canvases I was thinking of using. I had a few different boxes in different sizes that I thought would look great set up on the wall. So the plan was set! It was a whole new way of recycling!

I got my boxes together, taped the tops shut, covered the front in white cardstock (to be sure the packaging didn’t show through the fabric), and cut holes in the back to hang them. Then I ironed the fabric pieces, cut them to size, and used my good ‘ol hot glue gun to secure the fabric to the boxes.

It wasn’t difficult at all to make these. It took a total of 1 hour, from start to finish. And the end result looks totally awesome!

Here they are up on the wall- You would never guess they are actually cardboard boxes that once contained our snacks!

Have you made any crafts with recycled items? I’d love to hear about them! Share your crafty ideas in the comments below!