What to do with baggage (the plastic kind, at least)

Unless you always carry reusable shopping bags around all the time you probably have plenty of plastic shopping bags lying around. (Of course, if this doesn't apply to you, you can always beg off extra bags from your friends. Trust me. They'll have tons.) So the question becomes, what to do with them? Perhaps some crafts? Yes, please!

Using an iron (and a well-ventilated area) you can turn plastic into fabric (of a sort). Trust me, it's spiffy. So let's get started!

Materials:

- Iron & Ironing board/surface
- Plastic bags
- Parchment Paper




Set your iron to a mid-range setting - I use the 'Polyester' setting, but you may need to tweak it depending on your iron. You want the heat to melt the layers of plastic into one solid sheet, BUT you also don't want to use too high a heat setting because you'll end up with gross super-hard swiss-cheese-looking plastic. Trial and error is a big factor, so don't give up after trying it one or two times.

Next, you have to prep your plastic. Fusing plastic is easiest when having a square-ish piece to work with, so cut off the bottom and handles from your bags. Fold your bag so that it is 4-6 layers thick (i.e. fold it in half then in half again), and put it between two sheets of parchment paper.

(The parchment paper helps keep your ironing surface and iron free from any melty plastic pieces.)





Slowly run your iron over the parchment paper. Be sure to use even pressure and keep the iron moving. Depending on the number of layers and the type of bag, it can take 30 seconds to 2 minutes to fully fuse your plastic into a single sheet. Again, this is a major trial-and-error craft project.

After you've ironed your plastic, check and make sure it is all one solid sheet. If you notice bubbles or areas not fully fused, iron over that particular area (you can see in this picture that the corner is not quite fused together).



So there you have it, an iron can turn plastic into a new craft medium for you!

Fused plastic project tutorials will be coming along shortly!