It’s time to start decking the halls! As we’re sure you know by now, we are huge fans of recycled crafts. It might not be obvious when looking at these festive votives, but they’re actually made from upcycled plastic bottles!! Each plastic soda bottle makes 1 or 2 votives, depending on how tall you cut them. All these votives were made from just six bottles, so imagine how many you could make after one of your holiday parties this year!

We picked out a few of our favorite colors of tissue paper and mylar from our stash and then got decoupaging! For this project we used Mod Podge Satin and we’re so happy with how they turned out. We brushed Mod Podge over the entire plastic surface to attach the tissue paper ornaments, and we love the almost frosted look it left on the plastic. Keep reading to see the full instructions!

• Mod Podge Satin
• Mod Podge decoupage brush
• Tissue paper
• Scissors
• Craft knife
• 1″ circle punch (optional)
• Empty plastic bottles
• Battery-operated tea lights
• Clear tape (optional)

Step 1
Start by using a craft knife to carefully remove the top and bottom of each plastic bottle so that you’re left with a even plastic cylinder. Use scissors to trim any rough/uneven edges.

Step 2
Repeat and cut the cylinders down to different heights. If your plastic bottles have a sticky white part from the label that you couldn’t remove (ours did) cut it off so that you now have a kind of C shape. If you plastic rolls back together, leave as is, or use a piece of clear tape to hold it back together if needed.

Step 3
Use a 1″ circle punch to cut out circles from various shades of tissue paper. We also used pink mylar, which we had to cut with scissors as it didn’t cooperate with the paper punch.

Step 4
Apply a layer of Mod Podge onto the plastic.

Step 5
Place the tissue circles onto the Mod Podge covered area and then apply another layer to seal it in. Repeat on all the plastic votives.

Step 6
To add the ornament hooks, cut rectangles and hooks out of gold mylar and Mod Podge those on in the same way as before. Cutting the hooks can be a little tedious, so if you’re doing this project with kids, gold paint might be a quicker option.

And of course, since these votives are made of plastic you’ll want to use battery-operated tea lights to keep everything safe!

Happy crafting!!

This post is sponsored by Plaid Enterprises.