Soda Bottle Crafts: Creative Ways to Recycle Your Old Bottles

Soda and juice bottles are purchased by the thousands every year, and most of us throw them away when empty, but there are many different things you can do with the bottles. One thing that's really easy to do is to make a baby's play toy. Remove the label from a 20 oz plastic soda bottle and fill halfway with water. Add glitter and small plastic toys to the mix. You can also use colored sand, sequins, beads, or even novelty pencil erasers. Choose items that will float rather than sink. Rub a small amount of glue on the inside of the lid before screwing on tightly. A crawling baby will play with this toy for hours.

For slightly older kids fill one bottle a third full with bells. Fill another bottle with beads. Fill still another with dry noodles or rice. The noisemakers will keep kids busy for long periods of time. Make them more colorful by dropping in lengths of colored ribbon, sequin or glitter.

Use a 2 liter plastic bottle to make a cute snowman door stop. Sand the bottle slightly, all over. This will help the paint stick to the bottle better. Paint the bottle with white acrylic paint. Get a plastic margarine lid along with the lid from a spray paint can, or something similar in size. Sand them slightly and paint them with black acrylic paints. To give the hat more texture you can add felt to the margarine and spray can lids. Cut a hole, slightly smaller than the spray can lid, in the center of the margarine lid.

Turn the spray can lid where the open side is down and glue it to the center of the margarine lid, over the hole in the center of the margarine lid. Fill the bottle halfway with sand, small rocks or even marbles. Screw the cap back on the bottle then glue hat on top, making sure the cap from the bottle goes into the hole of the margarine lid.