Recycled/Upcycled Plastic Endtable

With this challenge I decided go big or go home, and went for something very large. That being a full sized end table. Which I also themed for the Halloween season ever so slightly with the design.

1. 4 large round tubs
2. 1 large round platter for the base
3. 1 larger round platter for the tabletop
4. 3-4 triangular plastic supports
5. At least 60 similarly sized bottle caps of any color
6. As many small plastic scraps you can get your hands on
7. Hot glue

Firstly you need to gather your supplies and get ready to start. The only variable parts of this step is that of what color bottle caps you wish to use. I decided upon blue, black, orange, and green for my own table.

The next thing to do is to lay out the bottle caps in whatever pattern you want on top of your platter. To go with the spooky season I decided upon a blue background with two large eyes. Then once you have decided upon the layout of the bottle caps, begin the gluing process a single cap at a time. Yes it is tedious, but this is the hardest part of the project.

The next thing to do, preferably while the glue on the tabletop is drying, is to stack the four tubs in the pattern shown in the image. Making sure to have the wider opening of the tubs on each end be what is glued to the bottom plate and tabletop.

Now, this one will require some amount of waiting as you need to make sure that the hot glue connecting each tub is dry. Once that is done you will begin layering the plastic scraps, whatever they may be, inside of the tub with hot glue both gluing it down and connecting it to the previous layer. I was lucky enough to be able to get most of my scrap from fellow students also cresting things for this challenge, though if you dont have that luck you could always just use more bottle caps as a few of my layers were also composed of that.

The next step, after the weight inside of the tub is finished drying, is to glue the table top and bottoms to the middle support. Making sure the side with the weight is on the bottom attached to the smaller platter. So as to help make the table not be top heavy.

As you may have noticed, the top platter tends to be easily bendable under stress directly after attaching it alone to the middle support. To fix this you will take your triangular supports and attach them to both the edges of the platter and the middle support itself. In the image the table is flipped over so as to allow easier access to attachment. If you do not have access to the same plastic materials I do, any sturdy thick plastic that is long enough will do, whether it be a rod or a water bottle cut to fit the shape. After this, you have made the table and are finished, congratulations!