28 Fun Trash to Treasure Ideas For Creative Art (A Fun Way of Looking At Serious Crafts)

Wednesday, August 10th, 2016

Enough with hustle from the rubbish removal in London by Rubbish Begone for a moment. These jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring trash to treasure ideas redefine the meaning of creative art. Immerse yourself in a vortex of trashy elements – metal, plastic, paper, glass and wood – all twisted, bended, burnt, tailored, cropped, torn apart and melted in order to produce these:

Brutally-Cool Heavy Metal Arts

BADASS SCRAP METAL BIKE

Talk about metal arts… how about a chopper? This little baby is just a 100 hp engine away from being a road running awe-inspiring beast on wheels.

Well, maybe a cushion to sit on plus rubber tires and working breaks might also contribute to a wholesome experience though an engine is all you need to get going.

We will deliberately NOT tell you how to make one. Some forms of art deserve to be left unique and unrivalled  by fraudulent attempts.

HEAVY METAL YODA x3

This vicious scrap metal master Yoda is looking even more intimidating than its original George Lucas-made counterpart. Here, we have trash turned to treasure while Lucas’ creation – ideally treasured trash (just kiddin`).

The metal statues are only light sabres short of being truly dangerous to whatever force of evil that manifests itself before it. Actually, adding hands might be a good idea too.

Once again, we shall stand truly befuddled and in awe instead of foolishly trying to unravel its engineering complexities.

THE EUREKA ROBOT

This upcycled toy robot has a unique skill. It powers a light bulb and manages to look exceptionally happy rising its tiny metal parts up in the air.

Even the “raise-one-foot-balance-on-the-other” technique has been demonstrated with circus-like operating precision. Kudos, little recycled metal toy thingy!

RECYCLED METAL BAND

Whether death, black, neo metal or otherwise, these recycled figures are definitely well on their way to a metal band hall of fame.

Even if the award is “2nd Place Recycled Thing of the Month” or something like that.

We would like to issue a request for a drummer and a lead singer to be made as well. Those may still be down the pecking order of assembly in the workshop so a full on recycled metal band is not yet ready to record its first album. FYI, when it does come out, it will go by “Artificial Metal Arts” so keep an eye out for them.

THE SEXY METALWEAR

Have a skinny girlfriend that tends to get blown away in windy weather? No worries! Have her put this one and she’ll get as heavy as a medieval knight with full-on armour.

For real, that’s some heavy metal sh!t right there!

Beware it comes together with armoured underwear which may keep you too away from sinful behaviour for the foreseeable future. That is, until you slam that mother open with a concrete cutter or blow it up with a bazooka!

For the record, if any police officers, CIA, MI5 agents or rogue commandos start asking questions about those brilliant ideas, you totally didn’t read them here.

Futuristic Recycled Furniture Ideas

RECYCLE TO PORCH INNOVATIONS

A great number of venues like supermarkets and manufacturing facilities use wooden pallets, many of which end up in landfills to rot endlessly and needlessly.

Why let those go when you can custom design the entire porch and not even pay a dime.

From the base, to the chairs, ottomans, rockers and coffee tables – release the spirit of imagination into the world. Keep doing so until the sheer awesomeness you create cracks the time-space continuum, the Leonardo da Vinci code, solves the Loch Ness mystery and wakes you up before it’s too late for work.

AIRCRAFT INTO FURNITURE. EASY, RIGHT?

Diseno-art reports of a company set up by two brothers who somehow have managed to come up with useful interior pieces using parts and leftovers from what it looks like scrap commercial airliners, fighters jets and bombers. What used to be garbage is now treasured as unique home/office décor.

And how awesome is that?

Wonder if they can make a couch out of unexploded (yet) bomb parts. Not that we plan on starting a civil war anytime soon, just genuinely curious.

Anyways, one of the better recycled furniture ideas we came across.

HAND-MADE TREE HOUSE

Not your average hobby, now is it? It sits comfortably in the furniture section of this post simply because shelters is what furniture is all about. But it may have been when you were little and didn’t grow up with tablets and smart phones like today’s kids. Those times were epic because we made things like this for fun:

This particular 16 year old kids is flashing an enormous smile to the camera after just finishing building her very own first tree house from 90% salvaged materials. She probably won’t smile so cheerfully when her boy classmates desecrate it with primitive forms of ‘maturation’. Kudos to her though!

THE “WHEEL” CHAIR

Don’t you just want one? If for no other reason just to have something people have never ever seen in their lives.

We promise you, all your friends and family will want to give it a try. You know, to check out if it’s comfortable enough for them to try and make one on their own and shove it in your face next time you visit over.

DRAWER HANGING WALL

What used to be a half-useless chest of drawers about to be tossed in the dumpster is now your new wall decoration with practical functions.

Make it blue, make it red or the colours of your national flag, football team or toss several buckets of different pain in seemingly random fashion and call it art. Play, enjoy and reuse.

SIT ON MY DISK!

The age of the disc is over. The age of compact flash storage and hard drives is slowly drifting away as well. Online storage and sharing across multiple platforms are truly the future.

Discs may be obsolete, however certainly not dead yet.

I bet this one can actually be comfortable, provided you have a good ton of discs scattered around. Just ask a few friends and the wonders hiding in their dusty basement boxes shall reincarnate into contemporary upcycled furniture craft.

SUPERCHARGED GLASS BOTTLE ART

GLASS FOOD PLATE

Ceramic plates are so yesterday. Glass bottle art is the future of elegant dining.

Amaze your guests with this cutting edge (lol, literally) method to serve food. Well, in all honesty the dangers are marginalised by the fact the glass has been worked out to essentially dull the edges to achieve utter harmlessness. Makes it slightly boring but hey, you can serve food to children now and not freak out how many fingers they end up losing in the process.

GLASS IS THE KEY

Have a bunch of old keys that do you no good? Well, good! This beyond-awesome bottle is the key to good art (ZINGER!)

But the bottle is curved and keys are generally not. So you might need to put them in a fire for a while and when they soften up, stick em to the bottle with some super glue. EZ!

GLASS CHRISTMASS TREE

Score an upcycling double tap by utilising that old Christmas tree as well as a good number of coloured glass bottles. One thing you will not need house clearance for since it could be re-used every year.

The method to make it happen is highly technological and requires in-depth understanding of mechanical engineering, advanced physics principles as well as years of experience in the DIY world. Though it involves just a single step that repeats itself over and over.

The step: Stick bottles onto branches.

Told ya it’s tricky business!

Sadly, no trash to treasure ideas were applied here. Just trash to decoration. Forget about that, it’s still a win!

COLUMNS FROM GLASS BOTTLES

Once you sober up from all the parting from last night, consider using the leftover alcohol bottles for something useful. Make this kind of simple shelf:

Which you can later use to store more alcohol before the next party takes place. You know, just to keep the cycle of drinking and upcycling going while having a solid reason why drinking is good.

For the record, we do not support drinking. Well, maybe water and orange juice if you ask us on a good day – these still technically go under ‘drinking’. But we do support art and DIY from bottles (whatever the original contents were).

ALCOHOLIC CHANDELIER

Another great item promoting sobriety, safe driving and rational decisions!

We mean it! There is nothing wrong having a cool, out-of-the-box chandelier drawing more gazes than the rest of the room.

For all we know, alcohol could have been dumped in the drain just to have the bottles available for the project. Who knows…

Probably not though.

EX-ALCOHOL CONTENTS BUDDHIST TEMPLE

As much as Zen transcends through time and space reaching out to the very depths of personal understanding, we can also figuratively assume it can be made of glass.

It takes time, efforts and a specific expertise to be able to come up with a structure of this kind. That is to say, virtually completely made of trash, yet treasure in its own right. Take a look at the bonus info section in the end (Earthships) to find out more on how you can make one yourself.

HANDY PLASTIC ART

PLASTIC LAMP BOUQUET

Plastic bottles are trash, right? No, treasure that can be transformed to real plastic art!

The awesome team at personalise.co.uk have managed to come up with yet another great gem. This plastic bottle bouquet will make good use of old plastic bottles you may have rolling around.

It’s easy and fun as well.

This one comes with a step-by-step guide because, you know, to score a few points on ‘usefulness’. Check it out:

Step 1

Gather around a bunch of plastic bottles. It may add some aesthetic value to have those of the exactly the same type a bottle but in any case, to each their own. Between 20 and 30 would do the trick depending on how big you would like your lamp bouquet to be.

Step 2

Cut the bottles’ bottoms at about 3 centimetres. Do that for all bottoms and aim for relatively good precision, that is to say to have all bottoms roughly the same size. Step 3

Glue them together in a round shape just so you can later fit a light bulb inside. Therefore leaving a small opening at one side is necessary for the bulb is unlikely to teleport itself inside your bouquet.

Step 4

Fit the lamp in. The turn it on and stand in awe at your upcycling skills.

Step 5

Share with friends. Don’t let your free roaming creativity slip unnoticed. You may as well inspire others to pick up some useless things and come up with their own upcycling masterpieces. Let the world transform trash to treasure and we may one day be all rich. Just saying.

IMPROVISED CAR SHADE

While utilising exactly the same approach, you can build your own car shade, provided you have the columns for support. And it looks great as well. Beware though, neighbours might get jealous (and then come around with chainsaws in the middle of the night to reduce your plastic bottoms to mere rubble).

HANGING POTS

We’ve already tackled the bottles’ bottoms pretty hardcore already.

*Did you know? Self-proclaimed behavioural scientists have come to know that putting ‘pretty’, ‘bottoms’ and ‘hardcore’ next to one another improves most men’s blood flow by an unknown percentage. But it’s a lot.

What about the rest of it (and we mean the rest of the bottle, of course).

The remainder of the plastic bottle can be utilised as an improvised pot for flowers or other plants. Remember to keep the cap or else run the risk to loose soil faster than you can say “This wasn’t supposed to happen, was it?”

BOTTELING THE GARDEN

If cutting plastic bottles seems like entirely too much hassle, consider using the whole thing to water the garden. Just pierce this crafty plastic piece of art conveniently according to your own spray range needs. By the way, you can get pretty creative with this one too. Just make sure to leave enough holes for water to freely escape, thus avoiding bottlenecking (ZING! We got you there!).

PLASTIC PIGGY BANK

Aside from direct usefulness, this little idea right here can also make for a great gift for a birthday of a friend with an environmentally conscious mind. This way, you can give them a practical solution to saving money, however insignificant the amounts may be. It all begins with the mindset and intent. Ask a criminal.

DE-HUMANIZING PAPER ARTS AND CRAFTS

CHOPPED HEADS

Recycling paper is something we have been doing for a while. Making paper arts and crafts from it is a relatively new thing.

By the way, those are some real chopped off heads covered with paper so people won’t freak out. Wait a minute, it is kind of freaky though. What kind of a psychopath artist did this?

Oh, its all good, just messing about a little (mostly at least).

PAPER WEDDING

These paper wedding ceremony… oh wait, those are real people!

Turns out a group of art students, who all made their costumes from recycled paper, opted for a zombie-like wedding ceremony. How stunningly original!

On a side note, if her underwear is also paper, her paperwear husband can simply cut to the chase in fine style, can’t he?

OUR BOSS PAPER FACES

Faces made out of paper. Ingenious. Especially when we can clearly see our boss in there.

Starting from top row, from the left:

Left most expression – when we tell him about our great ideas.

Second from the left – when he catches us facebooking rather than working.

Third from the left – when he’s been working hard all day just to throw a glimpse at his watch and realise its only been two hours from the start of his shift.

Top right expression – him in the middle of a staff meeting.

Bottom row from the left:

Left most expression – when you muster the courage to say you are leaving this piece of sh!t job.

Second from the left – before his first coffee.

Third from the left – after 3 coffees.

Bottom right expression – when he explains to you in detail why it’s not yet time for your promotion.

DREAM WOMAN

This is beautiful. And kind of sad too.

How lonely you must be to start creating paper women. Certainly less likely if one is in a committed and happy relationship. Shallow psychology experts also claim if a woman was the artist then she must be terribly aesthetically impaired herself to only project beauty outwards.

But leave that nonsense aside, we say its pretty cool. Period.

LITTLE PAPER MONSTER

How twistedly cool is this!

The three-eyed paper monster stands next to a smiling paper ghost which is just in front of a paper zombie sharing its immediate space with what looks like a paper mummy. Long live this gang of paper arts and crafts.

This ferocious crowd of recycled monsters is out to get us. That’s how it looks on paper at least.

BONUS INFO

WORLD OF EARTHSHIPS

When talking about trash to treasure ideas, we simply can’t miss out earthships. These off-the-grid self-sustainable structures are vastly superior than ordinary housing despite being almost completely made out of trash.

Not even mentioning how cheap they are as a result.

Tires, aluminum cans, glass waters – all coming to good use within the building design, instead of lying around in landfills or swept along sidewalks of poor neighbourhoods.

Trash, apparently is capable of providing a roof over your head, soundproof walls, sustainable water supply, cool temperatures in summer and warm ones in winter without even being connected to outside power source.

Water is provided for free, courtesy to nature. Rainwater is collected, filtered and stored. A recycling process entails and then, the purified water is being used for primary to run taps and showers. It then goes on to being used in the greenhouse garden and the toilet instead of flushing it instantly, wasting much of its potential.

Audrey Wright has reviewed earthships in this post, packed full of dozens and dozens of great photos.

Oh yeah, almost forgot. Food is now home grown and completely free as well. Home grown equates to healthier. Free equates to… well, FREE!

Although the end goal is to have no bills at all, ever, the initial construction is certainly associated with some costs that you should know about well before committing to your very own desolate paradise.

Earthships have come to be thanks to architect Michael Raymonds and you can see him and his crew in action building an earthship within 4 weeks in this short YouTube film. It’s a lot of fun indeed.

An earthship’s power is provided by solar panels which, well, do not come for free. Generally. Also, you need to hire a crew to help constructing and finishing it. While the initial construction stages may be accessible at no cost, as shown in the film, finishing will cost you some. And supporting materials like timber logs, steel bars and cement will have to be covered for with hard currency as well.

Before You Go

We hope you enjoyed going through this neatly collected list of trash to treasure ideas at least half as much as we did putting it all together. It’s all for the making of a better world for us all.

So, be kind and be cool about it and SHARE THE LOVE. Tell a friend or two and become the explorer of online awesomeness in their eyes.