How to Turn Plastic Container(s) Into Bumblebee Plant Pot, Plastic Flower Etc

I have a huge bag of plastic containers at home and it is the time to work on them to MODIFY IT into some useful/decorative items for my home!

So let's jump into the tutorial!

Basic supply is PLASTIC CONTAINERS

Others supplies differ based on your design.

We would need any X-Litre water bottle (based on the size of the plant pot we would need).

Enamel paint - yellow and black

Cutter and Scissor

Cardboard layers

File folder leaf (partially transparent)

Round shaped object (here i have used a deodrant cap)

Sketch pens

Thin aluminium strings

Cutting plier

Clay mould (for support in painting objects)

Super glue

Snowcrete/White cement

Use a scissor and snip off unwanted plastic strips at edges, to make it even in design.

Clean the outside of the container with wet and clean cloth, making it ready to paint.

Painting:

1. I used medium brushes to paint with yellow as a whole (i had an idea to do in another design in yellow earlier, thus i painted yellow across all the layers). You can directly pain across alternate lines in the container, and SKIP THE STEP 2 BELOW.

2. Now, using thin cardboard strips i wrapped one line of individual layers of yellow (where i wanted to retain as yellow) skipping the other line (present in the container). I used metal binder clips to stick both the ends temporarily.

3. I applied black paint across the alternate lines of the container. Thus in result, we would get a yellow and black stripes.

I took a photo of real bumblebee as inspiration and started making the wings!

Take a file folder leaf and cut into appropriate shapes of wings. While we require two wings for both sides, so there should be Four wing structure (2 fore wing and 2 hing wing) out of file folder leaf.

For those, who do not have much experience in doing with enamel paint they can use black sketch pens to draw lines for costa, stigma and mainly the veins running all through the wings.

Later, used black enamel paint to draw over the lines over the wings.

Using super glue/hot glue, i sticked the forewing and hind wing together to resemble the real wing as in the reference image.

Now, in order to ready the antenna we would need thin aluminium strings.

As i wanted my Bumblebee to be plump and stout, i cut short lengthened aluminium string so that the antenna is not too long (which may resemble the bee to be lean in structure).

Using cutting plier, i curved the string towards the tip.

In order to make the head of the Bumblebee we would need an object of round in shape.

So here, i am making use of a Deodrant bottle cap (made of plastic). You can also use a round shaped ball and cut them into half and use it.

I used clay dough as support, to complete my painting (in black) for the antenna and head of the Bee.

To assemble the BumbleBee i used super glue to fix all the prepared parts together!

Here, the assembly is explained in pictures in this step.

Things to be noted:

1. Before fixing the wings, it is wise to mark the position at the bottle when the wings has to be attached.

2. And also as we plan to make the plastic container as plant pot, we may have to attach the antenna to the inner side of the container specifically with white cement as watering of the pot might loosen the antenna (if we fix with glue). So here we use white cement, to fix antenna for this purpose.

Here are the supplies, to make the plastic flower:

Any plastic bottle, here i have used an empty detergent plastic bottle.

Thin aluminium string

Small bead

Bottle cap of the detergent bottle (or any round shaped object)

Enamel paint - yellow, green and red

Glue gun

Scissor

Cutter

Pencil/marker

Measuring tape

To make this kind of plastic flower, we may need to cut the bottle near the cap.

Here, i used a measuring tape to mark at equal positions for each petals (of the flower).

Then drew like shapes of petals of the flower.

Cut across the shapes, to create a flower like structure.

In order to make the flower to be bit erect (like how a flower would seen in the stem), we may have to press it from the side such that the screw part of the bottle goes to the bottom. I kept it under a sofa so that it gets pressed all through the day to stand erect finally.

Along with that, we will have to cut through the petals till the end(with knives).

To make the flower head, i am using the bottle cap and cut them into the required part with the help of hacksaw blade.

Then sanded with salt paper, to remove the rough pieces.

I painted the flower head as yellow, that looks suitable for my flower petals in white.

After the paint is dried, i drilled a small hole at the center of the flower head.

Now, take an aluminium string cut in long sized as resembling long stem of a flower.

At the tip of the string, i inserted a small bead and fixed with super glue, at the position.

The flower head with aluminium string, is also painted with

1. red enamel paint for the bead

2. green enamel paint for the string

Once the paint is dried, i inserted into the hole of the flower head such that the bead part is placed at the center of the flower head and stem (the string) is beneath it.

Then the flower head is fixed with the flower petal part, with the help of glue gun.

Along with this instructables, i would like to also cover some of plant pots which i modified during lockdown time(even before this challenge was announced). So the pictures may not be so detailed, but will provide enough details to anyone who want to replicate it.

I have used Portland cement and little amount paint powder(if required in colour variation) poured it into plastic bag so that i could cut a small portion at the end to use the cement as piping(like how we do writing over cakes) to draw lines/shapes onto the pot.

Later used, enamel paint to highlight the shapes and emulsion paint to colour over the pots.

Whoooooh now we've done everything!

Its time to place it as attraction for the House :)