What to make out of old plastic cups?

Earrings! What else?

I played again with old plastic cups made out of polystyrene (or in german polystyrol). For more details about the material and everything, just click here (an older blog entry from me :)). 

There is a craft fair at the 28th/29th of april here in leipzig where I will participate. Mh... yes... quite a long time ago since my last one. Far too long but my thesis and other things kept me too busy. 

The craft fair is organised by the "craftraum". 

For the people in leipzig -  the details:

Samstag 12-21 Uhr

Sonntag 11-19 Uhr

Im Hof des Craftraums

Thüringer Straße 23, Leipzig

direkt neben Spinnerei und Plagwitzer Bahnhof

Leipziger Künstler und Handwerker bieten selbstgemachte Produkte an.

Very, very large ones...

I added some stripes before...

...or looked like little dots would become after the heating process ^^

The next time I will try a different colour as background for taking pictures. Maybe it'll work better than this light one...

The dragonfly tile and the white!

In this case the white is again polystyrene. I stamped my dragonfly tile stamp on polystyrene and cut it out... after shrinking it with my heating tool I used the now little tile for earrings :)

White - Find your polystyrene...!

So simple. 

So beautiful.

I love the shape, the colour, the shine. 

The material is flexible although it reached its glas point. 

They make a clear and high sound if the come together.

This posting is for Michelle (from Mich L. in LA) and Michele (from Michele made me).

Why? Because I tried to do two things for which they are famous! On one hand I tried to broaden my view and see in unusual stuff material to create jewelery.... and on the other hand I searched through my whole flat to find old polystyrol which I could recycle!

I think a lot of you know shrinking plastic? This is made out of polystyrene (in germany the plastic has either a sign with 6 or 06 or with the letters PS, "Polystyrol"). Polystyrene is a material you can find in a lot of packages or just normal things in your household like lunch boxes. 

I used old plastic cups for my jewelery. Polystyrene can be formed through heat and pressure (it is a thermoplastic material). The shrinking plastic you can buy for crafting (stamping, scrapbooking) was pressed and squeezed under some heat and a lot of force. The pressure was evenly distributed in all directions. After it cooled down it won't change the shape anymore. There you have the shrinking plastic page.

After applying heat again without pressure (in the oven or with your heat tool) the polystyrene will get back to its normal shape. And even more, it will go over its glas point / glas transition because you have to heat it up over 100 °C. The structure is then very hard and shiny.

The sad thing is that although polystyrene is very easy to recycle, most countries are not doing this because it is too cheap to make new one. In germany ps is collected and recycled... but also only as long as people know in which kind of trash can they should throw it ^^

I write this because on the other hand ps is not degradable on a natural way...

So let's get to some recycling methods for your own old polystyrol :)

I used the already mentioned plastic cup. The dragonfly was painted with a waterproof marker...

...I turned the making-of pictures to grey because against all the white shapes the colours looked some kind of odd to me. But the earring above are all shown by the original coloured pictures! 

It is easy to cut the plastic cup with a normal scissor...

I cut the desired shape (this one I used for all the spirals) and punched a little hole at the bigger end.

After heating it will shrink to a small shape... which after repeated heating can be shaped as desired. Beware, I always burn my finger tips a little bit. ;)

You see the shine?

Until now nobody guessed what it was at first sight (and question) :)