TREASURES AMONG TRASH: HOW TO CREATE ORIGINAL JEWELLERY WITH WHAT’S AROUND THE HOUSE

Yet another one of your child’s friends has her birthday approaching. What will you give her this time? Why not a little trash? Yes, you heard correctly. Household trash, apparently useless, can be made into original gift ideas. How? Like this...

How many things there are in the bathroom? Empty toilet paper rolls (such as the ones from Lidl) can become luxurious bracelets for children. Cut the roll into rings of different widths (2 cm, 3 cm, 4 cm) and attach scraps of cloth on the cardboard rings. Or maybe you have an old t-shirt? Cut it into strips and apply them to the bracelets. For a really trendy look, decorate with a bit of glitter or coloured strips of cloth.

Photos for a personalised gift: bottle caps become brooches

Grandma would certainly love to have a picture of her grandchild near her heart. This simple, but beautiful craft is ideal: Attach a picture of the child on the inside of a bottle cap or jar lid. On the other side (the outside of the cap or lid) glue on a brooch pin or a safety pin. The next time you do the shopping at Lidl, keep an eye out for interesting caps and lids and their colours. You can make many different pins and brooches.

Real gems: a necklace of paper beads

You know how valuable Lidl flyers are? Look at them carefully. They are hiding countless pearls. Don't you believe it? We’ll show you. Cut a triangle 2 cm x 9 cm x 9 cm, roll it up tightly around a pencil or around a wooden skewer. Start with the shorter side; fix the ends with glue. When everything is dry, you can remove the paper from the wand – and you have yourself a bead. You can create a lot of precious stones this way and if you string them one after the other, you'll have a beautiful necklace.

Perfectly in order: an organizer made with egg cartons and plastic bottles

Jewellery production is underway; unfortunately, you can't use all of the jewellery at once. Where to put them? An egg carton makes a very suitable treasure chest for jewels. Colour it with your favourite colours and apply designs cut out from Lidl flyers or from other packaging. Brilliant stars or dots and dashes or hand drawn flowers are also beautiful.

Even plastic bottles can be transformed into fun boxes to store “jewels”. You need two 1.5 litre plastic bottles (from Lidl), scissors, a cloth ribbon, glue, 8 cm pipe cleaner, a bit of Velcro or fabric, paint and brush.

Proceed like this:

• Trim the bottom of the bottles to 8 cm. To make the pieces connect well with each other you have to remove about 1 cm of plastic on half of the edge.
• Now paint as you like and let dry well. Dots or stars make beautiful decorations.
• Make a hole with a nail or other sharp object in the bottom of the top half and insert pipe cleaner.
• Cut a piece of Velcro or cloth (about 4 cm) which you will glue on the pipe cleaner.

Now you can store your jewellery in the apple-shaped box. When you put on the cover, you can also wrap a ribbon around the centre and in this way, you'll also have a homemade gift box.

This is how the gift problem is solved. Trash is not always really trash; there are lots of lovely and fun ideas for recycling that you can make with your child and your family. With what’s left from your latest shopping trip at Lidl, your kids can create beautiful works of art. They will surely be proud of the result.